Chandigarh: On Monday, a pre-primary teachers’ union leader in Punjab’s Bathinda carried out her school duties with a police team keeping a watch on her lest she organise a protest at a government function in Ludhiana where Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann was the chief guest.
As pictures and videos of the teacher, Veerpal Kaur Sidhana, sitting in her classroom attending to her students with the police next to her went viral Tuesday, the opposition put the state’s ruling AAP on the mat for “smothering growing voices” of protest against the government.
“I was not even planning to go to Ludhiana,” Sidhana told mediapersons Monday. “The police reached my house at 6 am and detained me. Later, they accompanied me to the school where they sat next to me till 2 pm when the CM’s function at Ludhiana had ended.”
“I went to sit in the classroom with only a few students so that they don’t get traumatised with the police presence. There is a legal bar on police entering schools. For over two decades, I have never seen such a move undertaken by any government,” said Sidhana.
She leads the Shaheed Kiranjit Kaur Pre-Primary Associate Adhyapak Union, Punjab, an organisation that is demanding regularisation of services in government schools.
Leader of the opposition, senior Congressman Partap Singh Bajwa, slammed the Punjab government, saying police in classrooms was the Delhi model of school education, bringing in a revolution that terrified teachers and kids alike, referring to AAP’s stint in power in the Capital.
“All this because the teacher might protest for job regularisation? And guess what—she wasn’t even going!” he wrote on X.
🏫 @AAPPunjab Shiksha Kranti in Action:
Welcome to the Delhi Model – now with police in classrooms!
So THIS is what @ArvindKejriwal and @BhagwantMann meant by Education Revolution?👮♀️ 3 uniformed cops sat inside a pre-primary classroom in Bathinda for 6 hours — not to protect… pic.twitter.com/FdRfLgmr7Q
— Partap Singh Bajwa (@Partap_Sbajwa) August 5, 2025
Another Congress leader, Pargat Singh, said on X that the tendency of the government to detain protesters was a “dangerous, dictatorial trend”.
Akali leader Parambans Singh Romana termed the action a “shame” on the Mann government.
The true face of #Badlav and #SikhyaKranti ….police enters a pre-primary classroom in a govt school in Bathinda to prevent a teacher from joining a protest against the govt ‼️@ArvindKejriwal and @BhagwantMann do you realise the effect on such young impressionable minds when… pic.twitter.com/ooy0muPAm3
— Parambans Singh Romana (@ParambansRomana) August 5, 2025
The Punjab government has so far offered no explanation for the incident. ThePrint reached AAP spokesperson Neel Garg via message for a comment, but he did not respond.
However, at the Ludhiana function where Mann launched ward and village defence committees to curb drug abuse, he criticised the earlier governments in Punjab for silencing voices of protest.
“During Akali rule, people would sit with folded hands in villages when their leaders spoke. Then in 2014, when I became MP, I told the people to question their leaders. Some MPs from Punjab even complained to me that I had made it difficult for them to get out of their cars in villages as people were asking questions,” he said.
“This is the change… I am accountable and anything can be asked from me… In Sunam, once someone dared question Sukhdev Singh Dhindsa during a public programme and he was immediately taken away and locked up.”
The Bathinda school incident comes less than a week after a protester was removed by the police from the venue of a function in Sunam where Mann and AAP convenor Arvind Kejriwal were speaking to mark the death anniversary of martyr Udham Singh on 31 July.
At the event, the man sitting among the audience had stood up and held up a banner that said ‘646 ETT’, referring to the union of trained teachers who are demanding jobs from the government, but was immediately surrounded by the police.
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Crackdown
Earlier in the day on 31 July, leaders of the ‘646 ETT’ union had claimed that many of them were put under house arrest to stop them from protesting against the government.
Even some members of the extended family of martyr Udham Singh who were invited to the 31 July programme alleged that they were removed from the stage and detained for hours in a room after they informed the administration that they will demand a government job from Mann and Kejriwal.
“I was sent an invitation card for the programme to be honoured as a family member of Shaheed Udham Singh. I was made to sit on the stage initially, but when I told the SDM on duty that I will be giving a memorandum regarding the pending issue of a government job to my son, I was asked by the police to step down from the stage and taken to a room where I was made to sit for hours,” Jeet Singh, grandson of Udham Singh’s sister Aas Kaur, told ThePrint Monday.
“The SDM could have just taken the memorandum himself instead of treating me like this. I was a teenager when I along with my grandmother lit Udham Singh’s pyre in 1974 after his body was exhumed and brought to India from London. And this is how the government of Punjab honours us today,” he added.
Jagga Singh, Jeet Singh’s son who too was detained in a room after he went looking for his father, said: “We were told that Kejriwal and Mann would meet us in the room to talk about my job. But no one came to meet us. Instead of humiliating us like this, it would have been better had the government shot us dead.”
He added that he had been promised a government job by Captain Amarinder Singh when he was CM of Punjab in 2006 but no government since then has bothered to fulfil that promise. “I work in a cloth shop and my elder brother works as a painter,” he said.
When contacted, Sangrur deputy commissioner Viraj Shyamkarn Tidke told ThePrint that he had received a complaint in the matter and was inquiring into it.
Congress leader Sukhpal Singh Khaira put up a post on X detailing the ordeal of Udham Singh’s relatives. “The truth about fake revolutionaries like @BhagwantMann who exploit the name of Shaheed Udham Singhji for political purposes but disrespect his living family members,” he wrote. Khaira was also among the first to highlight the Bathinda incident.
On Sunday, protesting computer teachers who tried to meet the CM in Sangrur were allegedly roughed up by the police and stopped from meeting him. On 1 August, at Arniwala village in Fazilka tehsil, almost 50 unemployed teachers were rounded up by the police from outside the venue of an event attended by Mann and Kejriwal, where they were raising slogans against the CM. The duo was on a visit to a school of eminence in Arniwala.
(Edited by Nida Fatima Siddiqui)
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