The Delhi police on Saturday detained 11 civil services aspirants who were allegedly protesting outside department of personnel & training (DoPT) minister Jitendra Singh’s residence demanding three additional attempts on a temporary basis.
DCP Jatin Narwal, New Delhi district, said, “DoPT minister Jitendra Singh met the protesters who handed over a memorandum to him. But when they tried to enter his house, police personnel stopped them from trespassing. Initially, the police stopped them from entering the house, but later around 11 protesters were detained and kept at the South Avenue police station.”
“The aspirants raised slogans against Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) and appealed for justice from the DoPT minister and the Prime Minister. But, the police lathicharged and detained some of them to and took them to the South Avenue police station. Around 15 students are on a hunger strike since the morning,” Shivangi, one of the protesters, said.
She, however, claimed that it was not a protest, but was just an appointment with the DoPT minister. “In 2011, Civil Services Aptitude Test (CSAT) paper was introduced, which proved to be discriminatory against the students coming from non-science, regional background, specially Hindi, rural background students. Even the government statistics and Nigvekar Committee and UPSC’s own research wing reports supported the same and showed that there was a decline in the students coming from Hindi belt clearing the preliminary stage from 35 per cent to 12 per cent within two years.”
She said the students demand that both general categories and other categories should be given three attempts at temporary charge. We have already lost five out of six years battling this discrimination.
“After the 2014 protests, CSAT was made a qualifying paper in 2015, but this is complete injustice.”
“We have been pursuing the ministry for the past 6 months regarding the issue, but the government has been apathetic and using stalling tactics,” she said.
