AIMIM president Asaduddin Owaisi on Thursday, 23 July 2026, sharply criticised the reported invocation of the National Security Act (NSA) against students protesting the NEET paper leak at Jantar Mantar, New Delhi, calling it an attempt by the government to suppress legitimate dissent and conceal its own failures.

Opening with an Urdu couplet — 'Aqabi ruh jab bedar hoti hai jawanon mein, nazar aati hai usko apni manzil aasmano mein' ('When the spirit of the eagle awakens in the youth, they begin to see their destination in the skies') — Owaisi framed the student protesters as a generation aspiring for accountability, not a national security threat.

Context

Students have been gathering at Jantar Mantar, the designated protest site in central Delhi, to demand action over alleged irregularities in the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET). The NEET paper-leak controversy has drawn widespread anger from aspirants who spent years preparing for the exam, which serves as the sole gateway to undergraduate medical and dental admissions across India.

Owaisi alleged that authorities plan to use the NSA to detain protesters. 'Under the NSA, the government can keep you in jail for months without trial — without appeal, lawyer, or argument,' he wrote, quoting the law's provisions in stark terms.

Policy Backdrop

The National Security Act, 1980 is a central preventive detention law that allows authorities to detain individuals for up to 12 months without trial, charge, or access to legal counsel, on grounds of national security or public order. Originally enacted to consolidate earlier detention statutes, it has periodically been invoked during periods of civil unrest.

NEET was introduced in 2013 and became the sole undergraduate medical entrance examination following a 2016 Supreme Court order. Allegations of paper leaks and irregularities have dogged the examination in multiple cycles, fuelling demands for systemic reform or the test's replacement.

Researchers tracking governance patterns note that central and state governments — across party lines — have repeatedly reached for preventive detention or similar legal instruments when student protests threaten to spotlight administrative failures in high-stakes examinations, prioritising containment over structural reform.

Stakeholders and Impact

The primary stakeholders are lakhs of NEET aspirants whose academic futures hinge on the integrity of the examination. Any NSA detention of student protesters would mark a significant escalation, transforming an education-policy dispute into a civil-liberties controversy.

Owaisi was direct in his assessment: 'Our young people are not a threat to the country's national security. The threat is an incompetent and arrogant government that wants to silence the voice of protest to hide its own failures.' The statement positions the AIMIM chief as a vocal opposition voice on youth and civil-liberties issues ahead of what could be a charged monsoon parliamentary session.

What's Next

The Supreme Court is expected to continue hearing petitions related to the NEET paper-leak controversy, and opposition MPs — including Owaisi — may raise questions about NSA usage in Parliament during the ongoing monsoon session. Any confirmed detention of student protesters under the NSA would likely intensify judicial scrutiny and parliamentary debate simultaneously.

If the government proceeds with NSA detentions at Jantar Mantar, it risks converting a localised education protest into a broader national conversation about the limits of preventive detention law — a conversation that opposition parties appear prepared to amplify.