UPSC row: Police holding students hostage, allege protesters

New Delhi: Scores of UPSC aspirants, who are staging protest at Jantar Mantar against CSAT, today alleged that police have held most of the students “hostage” in Mukherjee Nagar area and are not allowing them to participate in the demonstrations here. “We are planning to widen our protest against the current CSAT format but the government has deployed heavy security in Mukherjee Nagar and nearby areas like Nehru Vihar, Gandhi Vihar, Indra Vihar and Outram Lines. This has restricted around 20,000 UPSC aspirants from joining the protest,” Pawan an aspirant leading the protest said. [caption id=“attachment_1651093” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Representational image. PTI[/caption] The protest was earlier shifted to Jantar Mantar from Mukherjee Nagar area in North Delhi. “A large number of enforcement including paramilitary forces has been deployed and every movement in these areas is being closely monitored. Police stop and start questioning even if two or more people are seen together, which has now restricted the aspirants to join the protests at Jantar Mantar,” Pawan further added. On the other hand, police have refuted all these allegations terming them as ‘baseless’. “These are all false allegations and totally baseless and there have been no gatherings in these areas for which we would deploy forces”, DCP (North) Madhur Verma said. Most of the UPSC aspirants stay in the areas in North Delhi like Mukherjee Nagar, Nehru Vihar, Gandhi Vihar, Indra Vihar and Outram Lines. The UPSC aspirants have been for the past 26 days demanding scrapping of the CSAT format from the exmination. PTI