Several Left-leaning student groups at Jawaharlal Nehru University raised slogans against Narendra Modi and Amit Shah during a gathering at the campus’s Guerrilla Dhaba on Monday evening.
The protest came hours after the Supreme Court of India refused bail to former JNU students Umar Khalid and Sharjeel Imam in cases linked to the 2020 Delhi riots.
Sources said around 30 to 40 students associated with the Democratic Students’ Federation (DSF), All India Students’ Association (AISA) and Students’ Federation of India (SFI) participated in the demonstration, raising slogans critical of the Centre. One of the slogans targeted the Prime Minister and the Home Minister, prompting a strong political backlash.
The sloganeering drew sharp criticism from the Bharatiya Janata Party, which condemned the protest and linked it to the denial of bail to Khalid and Imam. BJP leaders described the demonstrators as part of what they termed the “tukde-tukde ecosystem” and branded them “urban Naxals.”
Reacting on social media platform X, BJP national spokesperson Shehzad Poonawalla accused the protesters of promoting anti-national narratives, while another spokesperson, Pradeep Bhandari, also criticised the incident in a separate post.
Meanwhile, the Delhi Police said it had not received any formal complaint regarding the sloganeering at the JNU campus.
Union Minister Giriraj Singh also weighed in, alleging that JNU had turned into a centre for what he called the “tukde-tukde gang,” a charge frequently levelled by the BJP against sections of the Opposition and Left-affiliated groups.
