Madhya Pradesh: ABVP protests against BJP’s membership drive in Indore college

A membership drive held by the Bharatiya Janata Party at a college in Madhya Pradesh’s Indore on Tuesday sparked protests from its sister organisation the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad, The Indian Express reported.

The Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad is the student wing of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, which is the parent organisation of the BJP.

Members of the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad held a protest against the principal of the Government Holkar Science College demanding that “temples of learning not be turned into hotbeds of politics”, the newspaper reported.

Rakesh Shukla, the BJP MLA from the Indore-3 constituency and the party’s city chief Gaurav Ranadive intervened to resolve the dispute.

Subsequently, the principal of the college, Suresh T Silawat, issued an order barring political events at the college “without the ABVP’s consent”, The Indian Express reported.

Ritesh Patel, the Indore city secretary of the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad, told the newspaper that they found BJP workers conducting a membership drive inside the college premises.

“We asked why this was being done and found that the principal had given permission,” Patel was quoted as saying. “The principal said we can’t deny them permission, so we began protesting.”

Patel said: “We told them that today, the BJP has come, and tomorrow, some other party will. We said this should be a temple of learning, not a hotbed of politics.”

Ranadive told the newspaper that the incident took place because of a misunderstanding.

“ABVP works inside the campus, we [BJP] were outside,” he said. “ABVP has its own stand. We have tried our best to tell them that we will do the membership outside the college campus.”

The party started its nationwide membership drive in early September, in an exercise that usually precedes the election of a new party chief.