Police detain UoH students ahead of SFI’s ‘Chalo Assembly’ call

Students of University of Hyderabad were detained by Telangana Police ahead of an SFI ‘Chalo Assembly’ protest. Activists alleged police overreach in hostels and demanded release of pending TS-EPASS scholarships amid ongoing budget session tensions

Hyderabad: Several University of Hyderabad (UoH) students were detained  by local police ahead of the ‘Chalo Assembly’ call by the Students Federation of India (SFI) Telangana unit on Wednesday.

The police, according to students, entered into various hostel premises in the early morning and arrested various student activists.

---

“We condemn the overreach of the Telangana Police into university hostels and the arrest of SFI–HCU student activists in the context of the ongoing Telangana budget session,” said SFI-HCU.

In any democratic country, when a budget is being prepared, governments are expected to engage with intellectuals from universities, listen to the voices of the poor, and consider the demands of the people to formulate a truly people-centric budget, the SFI HCU said.

However, in Telangana, university spaces have been turned into sites of fear for the government, led by Chief Minister A Revanth Reddy and the preacher of democracy Congress MP Rahul Gandhi, which failed to address people’s needs or present a genuinely pro-people budget, it said.

Students said the State government failed to release pending TS-EPASS scholarships, creating severe difficulties for marginalized students in continuing their education. They demanded the government immediately release all pending scholarships.

Even in the past, when SFI and other progressive organizations raised these issues through protests, the government responded with police repression rather than addressing legitimate concerns, they added.