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 led mobilisation of anger against India’s reservation policy as it exists. The protesters called for an overhaul of the reservation system, demanding that quota in public education and employment solely be based on an income criteria rather than on socio-economic categories, and also raised demands like “one family, one reservation”, and called for the government to roll back the UGC’s 2026 caste-equity rules.
The movement began when a student, Harsh Dubey, started the RHA Instagram page while the student movement being led by the Cockroach Janta Party was demanding the resignation of erstwhile Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan. Soon after Mr. Pradhan’s resignation, Mr. Dubey said he had handed over control of the page to veteran anti-reservation and general category activists Anuradha Tiwari, Ajeet Bharti, and Neha Das.
The protests in Jantar Mantar on Friday (August 21) come amidst the Bharatiya Janata Party-led Union government reiterating India’s stance 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 meant to ensure the representation of marginalised communities that have suffered from social, economic, and educational backwardness for generations. Further, on Thursday (August 20), the Union government had told the Supreme Court that it was rethinking the 2026 UGC equity regulations, which had led to wave of protests in January this year as well.
On Friday (August 21) morning, the protesters, many of whom were mobilised by different organisations representing people from “general” castes such as Karni Sena and Ranbir Sena, arrived at Jantar Mantar despite public statements from the Delhi Police saying that no permission had been granted for a demonstration at this site. By noon on Friday (August 21), the Delhi Police released another statement saying the protest had been permitted but at Ramlila Ground.
Stand-off with police
However, the protesters, hundreds of whom had already gathered at Jantar Mantar, refused to leave and had a stand off with the security personnel guarding the Jantar Mantar protest site behind multiple layers of barricading. Around 2 p.m., even as protesters shouted slogans against reservation, chanted “UGC rollback”, blew conch shells and chanted ‘Jai Shree Ram’, security personnel opened the barricading, resulting in the protesters pouring into the Jantar Mantar site. By evening, the protesters had set up a stage with a banner that read: “Reservation Reform Satyagraha”.
The Delhi Police have not responded to questions about whether permission has been granted for the protest at Jantar Mantar site subsequently.
Around 7.30 p.m., police personnel announced on loudhailers that the gathering at Jantar Mantar had been declared illegal and security personnel could be seen putting protesters on buses and taking them away from the site. As the police took protesters away on the buses, they charged, “Jab jab Modi darta hai, police ko aage karta hai”, a slogan that was recently popularised during the police action on students marching to Parliament.
The Delhi Police have not yet responded to The Hindu’s queries on how many protesters were 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 thing during the Cockroach protest as well.”
Alok Pratap Singh from Bihar’s Ranbir Sena told The Hindu, “There is a huge problem in the way we have let reservation system take over every aspect of politics. It has led to people seeing the General category folks in a certain way. Poverty does not have caste and there is no reason to continue with reservation for certain caste groups. We are at a point where all caste groups are equal. So, now our demand is that reservation should be based only on income and not on caste categories.”
Himani Sisodia, 27, from Uttar Pradesh’s Saharanpur, had also arrived at the protest site, and said, “General caste people like us are the ones who are suffering because of reservations. We are paying double the price for entrance exam forms, we are getting more marks in the examinations and yet we are losing jobs to reserved categories who are paying less to register and getting fewer marks. This has happened to me also and that is why I am here today.”
To submit memo to govt.
Ms. Tiwari, who has been part of the team handling the RHA page, said the movement would be submitting an official letter to the government with their demands shortly and added that for the time being the demands were focused on reforming the reservation policy. “This has become an untouchable topic. Nobody is willing to talk about the need to reform the reservation system,” she said.
A significant argument that the RHA movement has been making to support its call for overhauling the reservation system has been to point towards the concentration of quotas being availed by a small section of communities within each category of SC, ST, and OBC. This argument, which has led to larger calls for maybe introducing a creamy layer concept or the tool of sub-categorisation, is being used by the RHA movement to call for an overhaul of the system itself.
On the Instagram page, the RHA has posted a total of five demands. These are: income-based reservation; one family, one reservation — arguing reservation should only be available for one generation of a family; minimum qualifying marks for examinations and de-reserving unfilled reserved seats; a freeze on the 50% cap on reservations, a ban on political parties promising increased reservation, and periodic review of lists of communities that can qualify for quotas; and a sunset clause that provides an end date for reservations.
But even as the protesters gathered at Jantar Mantar throughout Friday (August 21), the activists leading the RHA page have not yet made a statement about how long they intend to demonstrate. While Ms. Tiwari insisted that there is no leadership to the protest as it was an “organic movement of the general category”, Abhishek Agnihotri, one of the protesters who had sought permission from the Delhi Police, said the protest was intended to “keep going”.
Mr. Dubey posted on X late on Friday night that a group of protesters were marching towards Raj Ghat after being removed from Jantar Mantar. In a video message, he said the protesters would demonstrate at Raj Ghat and return to Jantar Mantar if the police remove them from there as well.
Published – August 21, 2026 05:35 pm IST
