Police used baton charges against Kerala Youth Congress protesters marching to Raj Bhawan in Kerala's Thiruvananthapuram in protest of Rahul Gandhi's disqualification as MP, according to a video posted by the news agency ANI on Friday.
Earlier in the day, Kerala chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan described Congress leader Rahul Gandhi's removal from the Lok Sabha as a "violent attack on democracy" by the Sangh Parivar.
In a 2019 criminal defamation case over his "Modi surname" statement, Gandhi was convicted and sentenced to two years in prison by a Surat court on Wednesday.
A day later, in a statement, the LS Secretariat stated that his disqualification was effective as of March 23 – the day of his conviction.
Vijayan described Gandhi's disqualification as the "latest chapter" in the Sangh Parivar's assault on democracy.
"Using force to suppress opposition is a fascist tactic," Vijayan said in a statement.
The Congress has declared a nationwide movement against Rahul Gandhi's disqualification, stating that the government has moved quickly to "gag" him, and has called for a systematic approach to opposition unity.
Soon after Gandhi was disqualified by the Lok Sabha Secretariat, the Congress leadership convened at the party headquarters to discuss the next steps.
Top Congress leaders attended the meeting, including former AICC chief Sonia Gandhi, party president Mallikarjun Kharge, general secretaries Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, K C Venugopal, Jairam Ramesh, Rajiv Shukla, and Tariq Anwar, and senior leaders P Chidambaram, Anand Sharma, Ambika Soni, Mukul Wasnik, Salman Khurshid, and Pawan Kumar Bansal, among others.
The Congress' state units and frontal organisations would launch various programmes across the country, beginning on Monday with a nationwide agitation, he stated.
"We will go all throughout the country stating that Rahul Gandhi was purposefully disqualified because he has been raising his voice against the Modi government on a variety of issues such as demonetisation, GST, foreign policy, and the government's goals and policies," Ramesh added.