A meeting of Parliament's standing committee on home affairs witnessed a prolonged confrontation between BJP and opposition members on Tuesday (August 25), after opposition MPs sought a discussion on the alleged use of pellet guns and other police action against students and youth protesters at Jantar Mantar last month, The Tribune reported.

The meeting, chaired by BJP MP Radha Mohan Das Agrawal, was scheduled to discuss the views of various ministries on ‘Crimes Against Children’. However, the opposition insisted that the alleged use of force against protesters should also be taken up, arguing that students and minors were among those injured during the July 20 ‘Sansad Chalo’ march.

The meeting began at 11 am and continued until around 4 pm amid repeated exchanges between members.

Congress MP Ajay Maken raised the issue, pointing to allegations of pellet gun use, lathicharge and delays in registering an FIR in connection with a pellet injury case.

Earlier, Maken and Congress MP Priyanka Gandhi Vadra had written to committee chairman Agrawal on August 5, seeking suspension of the scheduled business to allow a discussion on the police action.

The Congress MPs argued that since students and minors were among those allegedly injured during the protest, the issue fell within the scope of the committee's mandate. Azad Samaj Party MP Chandrashekhar Azad also raised the alleged lathicharge on students in Meerut.

The committee chairman, however, did not permit a discussion on the issue, citing the fact that the matter was sub judice, according to the report.

Opposition members, including Congress MPs, Shiv Sena-UBT's Sanjay Raut, Rashtriya Janata Dal's Sanjay Yadav and IUML's Haris Beeran, continued to press for a discussion.

The disagreement soon took a political turn when BJP MP Tarun Chugh said that if members were allowed to raise issues outside the notified agenda, he too wanted to discuss the 1984 anti-Sikh riots.

Congress MP Jai Prakash responded by raising allegations of atrocities in BJP-ruled Haryana, before the chairman intervened to prevent the exchanges from escalating further.

According to an Economic Times report, Chugh's remarks were seen as a reference to Congress MP Deepender Singh Hooda's comments mourning former Congress MP Sajjan Kumar, who was convicted in connection with the 1984 anti-Sikh riots and whom Hooda had described as a “loss to the country’s political landscape”.

The chairman eventually rejected the opposition's demand for an immediate discussion, referring to the Supreme Court's decision to constitute a five-member panel headed by retired Supreme Court judge R. Subhash Reddy to examine allegations of police excesses and violence during the protests.

He, however, indicated that the parliamentary committee could take up the issue of Standard Operating Procedures governing the use of force against protesters at a later date.

Following this, tempers subsided and the committee returned to its scheduled agenda. It heard presentations from officials of the Ministry of Labour and Employment, the Department of School Education and Literacy under the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment, and the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare on the issue of crimes against children.

The nearly five-hour meeting thus ended without a discussion on the allegations of pellet gun use and police action against protesters, but the sharp exchanges reflected the political tensions surrounding the incidents and the continuing demand from opposition parties for accountability over the use of force against students and young protesters.