Wednesday, August 23 2006 11:09 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

New Delhi: Hundreds of students and medicos yesterday (Aug 22,2006) took to the streets here and clashed with police as they resumed their agitation against the UPA Government's decision to provide reservation in government-aided elite educational institutions.

A day after the Union Cabinet decided to introduce a bill in Parliament providing 27 per cent reservation, students from several colleges and medical schools in the national capital joined under the banner of 'Youth for Equality' in flaying the move and demanding its immediate reversal.

In scenes reminiscent of the earlier medical agitation, students converged in large numbers at Jantar Mantar, some 500 metres away from Parliament, chanting anti-Arjun Singh and Anti-Government slogans, waving the tricolour and singing patriotic songs.

Attacking the government for taking the decision under political compulsion, the medicos' representatives said they would go to any extreme, including going on a strike, this time round to force the government to reconsider its decision.

"We will continue the agitation with the same intensity. Earlier, we had called off the stir after the Supreme Court intervened. The apex Court should now tell the government as well to reconsider the decision as the matter is subjudice," said Anil Sharma, spokesperson of the AIIMS Resident Doctors' Association.

He said the medicos were also considering legal experts and indicated that they would move the Supreme Court against the decision to provide reservation for SC/STs and other backward castes in elite central educational institutions, including IITs and IIMs, from next academic year.