New Delhi: Delhi Police on Tuesday detained Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, along with 17 of his party colleagues, after they sat on a dharna and staged a protest march towards Rashtrapati Bhavan to submit a memorandum.
Just before he was detained on a road near Vijay Chowk here, Gandhi said, “India has turned into a police state and Prime Minister Narendra Modi is behaving like a king.”
Gandhi earlier sat on the road while staging the protest. The police personnel had a tough time convincing him to vacate the place since it is a high-security zone and Section 144 was in place.
When Gandhi did not heed to their persuasion, he was whisked away in a police van.
Later, in a tweet, Congress leader Jairam Ramesh said, “All Congress MPs stopped at Vijay Chowk and prevented from marching to Rashtrapati Bhavan. Forcibly arrested. Now we are in police buses being taken to a place only PM and HM know where.”
Manish Tewari, another party leader, said, “We were going to Rashtrapati Bhavan to submit a memorandum to the President against misuse of central agencies, but we were detained and are now being taken to Kingsway Camp Police Lines.”
Congress leader Mukul Wasnik termed the police action as “dictatorial attitude of the government”. He said, “The government is not allowing any discussion in Parliament on pressing issues of price rise, hike in GST, rising unemployment and others concerning people. We wanted to convey all these to the President.”
Meanwhile, at the AICC headquarters too, there was commotion between youth Congress leaders and workers and security personnel deployed there.
Talking to media, Congress leader Sachin Pilot said, “Democracy has been throttled as the government is neither allowing discussion on any issue nor holding of peaceful protests.”