Pro-Left students clash with police in Kerala,15 injured

Fifteen persons,including a CPI-M MLA and 10 policemen,were injured in an agitation by students.

Fifteen persons,including a CPI-M MLA and 10 policemen,were injured as an agitation by student wings affiliated to Left parties over self-financing college admissions turned violent on Wednesday.

As the march taken out by SFI and AISF,student wings of CPI-M and CPI,turned violent,police lobbed teargas,used water cannon and baton charged the protesters.

Pro-Left student and youth groups in the state have been on protest mode for the past few days accusing UDF government of having failed to rein in the managements of self-financing colleges which had declined to follow the policy of filling half the seats in their institutions from the state quota.

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A CPI-M release said R Rajesh,MLA from Mavelikkara,and some SFI leaders were among those injured in the baton charge.

Protesters also took out a march to the city police Commissioner’s office in Kozhikode,where police cane-charged them when they sought to break the police cordon.

Police alleged that the situation got out of control after the protesters pelted stones at them. The protest held up traffic for over an hour.

In the state capital,activists of CPI-M’s women’s wing AIDWA and youth outfit DYFI organised protest march condemning the beating up of students by police.

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Voicing concern over the protests taking violent turn,Chief Minister Oommen Chandy appealed to the protesters to stick to peaceful and democratic ways.

The CPI-M state secretariat,in a statement,condemned the “police brutality” and warned the government that it should not think that the protests could be suppressed by violent means.