After Assam and Bihar, Bengal and Maharashtra to stop coercive action against protesters

The Bharatiya Janata Party governments in Maharashtra and West Bengal on Tuesday stopped coercive action against protesters who demonstrated against alleged irregularities in public exams last week, The Indian Express reported.

In Maharashtra, Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis, who is also the state’s home minister, ordered the authorities to withdraw first information reports against protesters, the newspaper reported.

Twenty FIRs were registered in Mumbai in which more than 1,000 persons had been booked.

In West Bengal, the BJP government said it would not take coercive action against students. However, it cited an order passed by the Supreme Court on Tuesday to state that the cases against persons with criminal antecedents would not be dropped, The Indian Express reported.

The authorities were quoted as saying that as of Sunday evening, one case had been registered based on a complaint filed by the police in connection with the protests against paper leaks.

Sixteen persons had been arrested in the matter. All of them had been granted bail by the chief metropolitan magistrate’s court on Tuesday, The New Indian Express reported.

Six other cases had been registered on complaints by journalists who alleged that they had been assaulted during the protest on Friday.

On Monday, the BJP governments in Assam and Bihar said that they will release protesters who were detained or arrested during the agitation against alleged irregularities in...

Read more