Now the protestors at Jantar Mantar are seeking an overhaul of the reservation system

Thousands of protesters gathered at Jantar Mantar in New Delhi on Friday (August 21, 2026) under the banner of Reservation Hatao Andolan (RHA), a CJP-style Instagram page that has led to the mobilization of anger against India’s reservation policy as it exists. The protesters called for an overhaul of the reservation system and demanded that quotas in public education and employment be based only on income criteria and not on socio-economic categories, and also raised demands such as “one family, one reservation” and called on the government to scrap the UGC caste law rules of 2026.

Also Read: Jantar Mantar protest: Noida student gets notice, later revoked

The movement began when a student, Harsh Dubey, started the RHA Instagram page, while a student movement led by the Cockroach Janta Party demanded the resignation of former education minister Dharmendra Pradhan. Soon after Mr. Pradhan’s resignation, Mr. Dubey said he handed over control of the site to anti-reservation veterans and general category activists Anuradha Tiwari, Ajeet Bharti and Neha Das.

The protests at Jantar Mantar on Friday (August 21) come amid the Bharatiya Janata Party-led Union government reiterating India’s position that reservations for socio-economic categories such as Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and Other Backward Classes were not a poverty alleviation scheme, but a scheme to ensure representation of educationally and economically backward communities that had suffered for generations. Further, on Thursday (August 20), the Union government told the Supreme Court that it was reviewing the UGC share regulation of 2026, leading to a wave of protests in January this year as well.

On Friday (August 21) morning, protesters, many of whom were mobilized by various organizations representing people from “general” castes such as the Karni Sena and Ranbir Sena, arrived at Jantar Mantar despite public statements by the Delhi Police that no permission had been granted to demonstrate at the site. At midday on Friday (21 August), the Delhi Police issued another statement saying that the protest was allowed, but at the Ramlila Ground.

Standoff with the police

However, the protesters, who had already gathered in the hundreds at Jantar Mantar, refused to leave and halted with security personnel guarding the Jantar Mantar protest site behind several layers of barricades. Around 2:00 pm, even as the protesters shouted anti-reservation slogans, chanted “UGC rollback”, blew conch shells and chanted “Jai Shree Ram”, security personnel opened the barricade, leading to protesters pouring into the Jantar Mantar site. By evening, the protesters had set up a stage with a banner reading: “Reservation Reform Satyagraha”.

Delhi Police did not respond to questions about whether permission was subsequently granted for the protest at the Jantar Mantar site.

At around 7:30 pm, police personnel announced over loudspeakers that the rally at Jantar Mantar had been declared illegal and security personnel were seen putting protesters into buses and taking them away from the venue. As the police took the protesters away in buses, they chanted “Jab jab Modi darta hai, police ko aage karta hai”, a slogan popularized recently during a police crackdown on students marching to Parliament.

The Delhi Police has not yet responded to The Hindu’s queries on how many protesters have been detained.

However, Ms Tiwari told The Hindu late on Friday: “The protest will continue. More people are coming. The police cannot act like this. They did the same during the cockroach protest.”

Alok Pratap Singh of Bihar’s Ranbir Sena told The Hindu: “There is a huge problem in the way we have let the reservation system take over every aspect of politics. This has led to people seeing people in the general category in a certain way. Poverty has no caste and there is no reason to continue with reservations for certain caste groups. We are at a point where all income and caste groups should be based on reservations alone, which should not be equal.” category.”

Himani Sisodia, 27, from Uttar Pradesh’s Saharanpur, also arrived at the protest site and said, “General caste people like us are the ones who suffer because of reservations. We pay double the price for the entrance exam forms, get more marks in the exams, yet we lose jobs to the reserved categories who pay less for registration and get less marks, and I have less marks today too.”

Submit a memorandum to the government.

Ms. Tiwari, who was part of the team managing the RHA site, said the movement would soon submit an official letter to the government with its demands, adding that the demands were currently focused on reforming the reservation policy. “This has become a touchstone. No one is willing to talk about the need to reform the reservation system,” she said.

A significant argument supported by the RHA movement in its call for an overhaul of the reservation system was to point to the concentration of quotas enjoyed by a small section of communities in each SC, ST and OBC category. This argument, which has led to greater calls for the possible introduction of a creamy layer concept or sub-categorization tool, is being used by the RHA movement to call for an overhaul of the system itself.

RHA posted a total of five requests on its Instagram page. They are: income-based booking; one family, one reservation – arguing reservation should only be available for one generation of the family; minimum qualifying marks for exams and cancellation of unoccupied reserved seats; a freeze on the 50% reservation limit, a ban on political parties promising more reservations and regular review of lists of communities that can qualify for quotas; and an expiration clause that sets an end date for reservations.

But even as protesters gathered at Jantar Mantar throughout Friday (August 21), activists leading the RHA page have yet to make a statement on how long they intend to demonstrate. While Ms Tiwari insisted that the protest had no leadership as it was an “organic general category movement”, Abhishek Agnihotri, one of the protesters who sought permission from the Delhi Police, said the protest should have “continued”.

Mr. Dubey posted on X late on Friday that a group of protesters were marching towards Raj Ghat after being removed from Jantar Mantar. In a video message, he said that the protesters were demonstrating at Raj Ghat and would return to Jantar Mantar if the police also removed them from there.

Published – 21 Aug 2026 17:35 IST