Workers of Chandigarh Youth Congress on Saturday briefly help up the Chandigarh-New Delhi Shatabdi Express in order to protest the disqualification of Rahul Gandhi as a member of the Lok Sabha. Congress leader Rahul Gandhi was disqualified from the Lok Sabha on Friday, a day after being convicted to two years in jail in a defamation case over his ‘Modi surname’ remark in 2019. The protesters on Saturday, squatted on the tracks before the train,and climbed on to its engine to raise slogans. Chandigarh Youth Congress President, Manoj Lubana, later claimed that the train was held up for 10 minutes, before it was allowed to proceed. Lubana said,“Today (Saturday) we protested against the dictatorial manner in which Rahul Gandhi’s membership was cancelled by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).” A senior railway official, however, denied the claim and said that the train departed exactly on time at 12.05 pm as scheduled from platform number 3. He said that the youth Congress workers were removed from the tracks quickly and they were not allowed to disrupt train movement. Meanwhile, the National Students' Union of India (NSUI), the students' wing of the Congress, also held a protest on Saturday under the leadership its Chandigarh unit president, Sachin Galav Sharma.
