New Delhi / Goa – 23 July 2026
The All India Catholic Union (AICU) demands that the Union Government table, without delay, a comprehensive White Paper on the crisis in education in India — wrought through the National Education Policy 2020, the recurring collapse of NEET and other national examinations, and the police violence unleashed on students at Jantar Mantar this week protesting at the threat to their future.
The AICU, Asia’s largest association of the Catholic Laity, and founded in 1919, is also aghast at the treatment meted out to the Leader of the Opposition for raising his voice on their behalf. India’s young cannot be governed by denial. They deserve an honest, public reckoning, not evasive briefings and baton charges. A nation that tear-gases its own students in the steps of its Parliament has a great deal to answer for.
The AICU stands with the young women and men of Jantar Mantar, and with every citizen who still believes that dissent is not a crime in a democracy, but its lifeblood, AICU National President Mr. Elias Vaz said. In visuals seen across the world, the images of young women and men who had walked from every corner of the country to be heard but were driven back with batons and tear gas shells has shocked the democratic conscience of people.
The AICU condemns, in the strongest terms, this lathi charge and tear gassing of students and job aspirants, and the police high-handedness meted out even to Mr. Rahul Gandhi, Leader of the Opposition, and several other senior political leaders of the country, for standing with them. These were not rioters. They were students, engineers, teachers-in-waiting and unemployed graduates, many of them women, who had done nothing more than ask their government to keep faith with them.
The AICU has, since the Constituent Assembly, held that India’s founding promises rests on the dignity of every citizen and the accountability of the state to the people it serves. Articles 19 and 21 guarantee the right to assemble peaceably and the right to life and personal liberty, including liberty from custodial and street violence. These are not privileges extended at government convenience; they are the bedrock of the Republic.
When the state meets legitimate grievance with lathi and gas, it is the Constitution itself that is bruised. Paper leaks in NEET and other recruitment and entrance examinations have become almost routine, leaving lakhs of honest students with cancelled papers, delayed results and careers held hostage to official incompetence, and at times complicity.
The National Education Policy 2020 promised transformation; it has instead presided over government schools crumbling from neglect, even as vacated school buildings are quietly handed to ideological outfits. Young India took to the streets because it has run out of patience with a system that keeps moving the goalposts of its future. The AICU calls upon the Union Government to halt all use of force against peaceful protesters, order an independent judicial inquiry into Monday’s police action, and hold accountable officers responsible for excessive force, particularly against women protesters.
We demand the unconditional release of all detained students, medical care and compensation for the injured. Above all, we reiterate our demand for a White Paper, tabled in Parliament this Monsoon Session, laying bare the NEP’s failures in government schooling, the repeated compromise of NEET and other examinations, the human cost of Monday’s police action, and a credible, time-bound roadmap for education reform and youth employment.
