Several students were dragged and detained by Delhi police on Thursday during a march after their talks with the human resources development ministry failed to end the stalemate over the removal of the vice-chancellor.

The protesters, after picketing for hours at the Shastri Bhavan which houses the HRD ministry, began moving towards the Rashtrapati Bhavan via Janpath, where they were stopped by the police in large numbers. The police formed a human chain on the road to stop the protesters and later dragged them to the buses parked there.

A few of the students were injured when the police used batons on them.

“These are not police, these are goons,” former JNU students’ union joint secretary Amutha Jaydeep shouted from the bus in which she was detained.

Earlier, as hundreds of students from universities all over the city gathered outside the HRD Ministry, a delegation of students and teachers met the HRD ministry secretary Amit Khare.

Not happy with the response, the JNUSU president, Aishe Ghosh, emerged and called on students to march to the President’s House.

“We have enough of their assurances. This vice-chancellor is not capable of having a dialogue with us… The answer to my injury is not dialogue. We won’t let our protest end here,” Ghosh, who was hit on the head with an iron rod during the Sunday violence on the JNU campus, said.

Agitating students and teachers have been demanding the ouster of M. Jagadesh Kumar for long. This demand has been freshly invigorated after the Sunday incident when a mob of masked men ran amok on the campus destroying property and beating up students.

During their march to the Rashtrapati Bhavan, Janpath remained clogged and buses and other vehicles had a tough time traversing through the crowd.