NEW DELHI: Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Tuesday demanded that Prime Minister Narendra Modi must apologise to students for the police brutality against them and resign along with Home Minister Amit Shah.
Speaking with reporters in Parliament House complex, Gandhi said he met Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla in the morning along with other MPs and conveyed that the opposition wants to discuss the students issue.
“He (Birla) said he will have to ask the government. So, the Speaker is telling us that to debate in Parliament he has to take permission from the government,” Gandhi said.
“The issue is of students and the way people are being beaten up, this is completely ‘unIndian’. Modi ji has not even apologised for what has happened yesterday,” the Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha said.
These students are protesting over the education and testing system, he said.
“The whole country knows that the education system and the testing system is broken and has ceased to exist,” he said.
Thousands of young and angry people had converged near Parliament on the first day of the Monsoon session on Monday to push for the resignation of Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan, only to be pushed back by lathis and teargas shells.
Rahul further said that the testing system has been hollowed out by termites and that is what the students are stating.
“There is nothing wrong with that. We have been having presentation after presentation on it. Why is the PM silent? What is the reason? He should apologise to the students and stop this nonsense of police people thrashing students,” Gandhi said.
The former Congress president said he will meet the injured students.
Asked about the opposition's demand that Pradhan should resign, Gandhi said Pradhan is an intermediary.
“Absolutely, he should resign but Dharmendra Pradhan has not beaten up these students, but the home minister (Amit Shah) has, he should resign and the home minister reports to the PM, he should resign,” Gandhi said.