Members of Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) stopped a screening of the controversial BBC documentary on Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the 2002 Gujarat riots at Andhra University in Visakhapatnam on Friday, January 27. Members of the Students' Federation of India (SFI) had organised a screening of the documentary India: The Modi Question on the Andhra University campus on Friday. SFI, the students' wing of CPI(M), has tried to screen the BBC documentary in several universities across India.
On Friday, at Andhra University, a group of activists of the RSS-affiliated ABVP entered the Satavahana hostel on the campus around 10 pm and demanded that the screening of the documentary be stopped. This led to a minor clash between the supporters of the two groups, eyewitnesses said, according to IANS. The situation was brought under control after the university's chief warden for Arts College hostels, G Veerraju, and the police reached the spot.
According to The New Indian Express, Veerraju said that the university authorities directed the nearby security personnel to stop the screening as soon as they were informed about it. “Irrespective of what the content is, we do not want any kind of disturbance in the university,” Veerraju reportedly said.
G Subbaraju, ABVP's organising secretary, said that though the documentary was "banned" by the Union government, SFI wanted to show it on the university campus, adding that a petition will be submitted to the Vice Chancellor not to encourage such developments on the campus.
On the same day, the Madras University administration too denied permission for a screening of the documentary. In retaliation, a section of students led by SFI watched the two-episode series on their laptops on Friday. Student groups at colleges across India have been organising screenings of the documentary to resist the censorship imposed by the BJP-led Union government.
The Union government had termed the documentary as ‘propaganda’ and blocked links to the film by invoking Section 16 of IT rules 2021 and Section 69A of the IT Act, 2000. The links to the documentary were blocked on January 20. The Ministry of Information and Broadcasting also blocked the tweets that shared the link to the documentary.