'Kiss of Love' campaign disrupted in Delhi

The "Kiss of Love" bandwagon on Saturday reached the national capital where a major confrontation was avoided by police when it prevented around 60 protesters, mostly students, from reaching the RSS office in central Delhi where they wanted to stage a demonstration.

The event organisers had set up a Facebook page through which the event was fixed at 4 pm in front of the RSS office in Jhandewalan and youths were mobilised to join it.

As the protesters, mostly students of University of Delhi and the Jawaharlal Nehru University, tried to march from the Jhandewalan metro station to the RSS office, they were stopped by police who had set up barricades on the way.

Another group Hindu Sena had also organised a counter protest in the same area and there was a brief altercation but police stepped in to control the situation.

Asked so as to why they had chosen the RSS office for the protest, the protesters alleged that the right wing groups have been "denying them public space" to express their affection.

"While around 50 campaigners managed to cross the first level of barricading, all of them were stopped at the second barricade which was set around 50 metres away from the RSS office. We had orders to arrest whosoever tried to get past the final barricading but nobody was detained or arrested and all of them dispersed around 7 pm," said a senior police official.

The barricading and protesters caused severe traffic congestion in the area which was removed by 7.30 pm, he added.

The first "Kiss of Love" event was held in Kochi on November 2 after activists from all over Kerala decided to protest against alleged moral policing by right-wing groups. Similar events have been organised at Kolkata, Hyderabad and Mumbai.

The campaign stated after a coffee shop in north Kerala's Kozhikode city was vandalised by a group of people who were protesting against "public display of affection" by some couples there.