Lucknow: The government has launched a crackdown on students, who are protesting against an alleged reservation scam that took place in 2018 in the recruitment of 69,000 teachers. Three aspirants — Amrendra Patel, Virendra Pratap and Vijay Pratap Yadav — were arrested on February 25. However, they managed to secure bail on February 29 — four days after their detention in jail.

They, including hundreds of others, had been staging a peaceful sit-in at Kanshiram Eco Garden for the past 620 days, raising their voices against purported discrepancies in the implementation of the reservation system.

The trio have been booked under sections 151 (knowingly joining or continuing in any assembly of five or more persons likely to cause a disturbance of the public peace), 116 (abetting an offence punishable with imprisonment) and 160 (committing an affray) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC).

“The police called us on the pretext of arranging a meeting with the chief minister (Yogi Adityanath) and other officials. But it turned out to be a trap to prevent us from organising a protest in front of the office of Apna Dal (an ally of the Bharatiya Janata Party government in the state). The government is punishing us for being Dalits,” Amrendra Patel, one of the agitators who was arrested, told The Mooknayak.

Claiming that they won’t be intimidated by such browbeating, he said they will return to the protest venue from March 2 once again with their demands. 

“If the administration tries to suppress us, then a ‘Jail Bharo Andolan’ (voluntary arrest) would be launched across the state,” he said.

The agitated candidates have been demanding that the government must appoint them as part of the 2018 notification.

The agitating students claimed that the discrepancies they raised in the recruitment drive have already been acknowledged by the government.