When police batons meet student placards, something has already gone very wrong. That’s exactly the message the All Arunachal Pradesh Students’ Union is sending to New Delhi.
From Jantar Mantar to Itanagar — The Anger Is Spreading
The All Arunachal Pradesh Students’ Union (AAPSU) has thrown its full weight behind the NEET protesters demonstrating at Jantar Mantar in New Delhi, issuing a sharp condemnation of the police lathi charge that left several demonstrators injured during the July 20 ‘Chalo Sansad’ march. The union didn’t mince words. AAPSU president Meje Taku made it plain: students who march for a fair exam system are not criminals, and treating them like one is a failure of the very state that is supposed to protect them. It’s a sentiment that clearly strikes a nerve far beyond Delhi’s streets.
Wangchuk’s Hospital Bed Hunger Strike Becomes a Symbol
AAPSU linked the ongoing hunger strike by Sonam Wangchuk — currently undergoing treatment at Medanta Hospital — along with the sustained protest by the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP), to the frustration of lakhs of students and families whose futures have been put in jeopardy by what the union described as a compromised examination process. That’s a powerful image — a man protesting from a hospital bed. Taku described it pointedly: a hunger strike from a hospital bed is not a threat to the nation, it is a mirror held up to it. A government that cannot face that mirror has a serious problem.
The Demands Are Simple. The Silence Is Deafening.
The students’ body said Wangchuk’s demands were modest and reasonable — accountability for the alleged NEET paper leak, an assurance that the issue would be raised in Parliament, and a guarantee that no student or protester would face retaliatory legal action. Nothing radical about any of that. The CJP’s call for ministerial accountability has also been met with the kind of official silence that tends to make movements grow louder, not quieter. AAPSU has written directly to Prime Minister Narendra Modi urging immediate talks. The ball is firmly in the Centre’s court.
A Warning Arunachal Has Earned the Right to Give
Taku invoked history — and Arunachal Pradesh’s own — when warning that youth voices, if suppressed long enough, don’t just go away. They erupt. AAPSU warned that prolonged inaction could intensify public discontent, arguing that a protest centred on one examination could develop into a wider nationwide movement if the government continued to rely on force rather than engagement. The union left no room for ambiguity: if the Centre fails to act, statewide solidarity protests will roll out across Arunachal Pradesh. This won’t stay confined to Delhi, Taku said. It will spill over.
The Bottom Line
This is bigger than one exam. It’s about whether students in India can raise their voices without fearing a lathi. AAPSU’s appeal was clear: the students of this country deserve answers, not batons. When a student union from the Northeast is moved to write to the Prime Minister and warn of statewide unrest over an exam scandal, it tells you just how deep this wound runs. The government can still choose dialogue. The question is whether it will — before the streets of Itanagar start echoing what’s already happening at Jantar Mantar.
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