PATNA, Oct. 11 -- Clashed erupted at the campus of the JD Women's College on Saturday as teachers, non-teaching staff and students protested against the proposed merger of the women's colleges into the newly-approved Maa Sita Women's University and the police personnel tried to stop them. A number of protesters were detained. The scuffle broke out when college staff and students, who were staging a demonstration, sought to take out a protest march to Lok Bhavan from the college. The police had closed the college gates and detailed more than 50 protesters, as the demonstration threatened to spill into a full march on Lok Bhawan. What began as a planned peaceful procession quickly escalated. Protesters, many wearing black badges, raised slogans against what they called a "conspiracy to kill institutional autonomy". Crowds pushed against the locked gates while police formed cordons. Traffic on the busy stretch of Bailey Road was disrupted for hours. Women faculty members and students had heated arguments with the police officers and showed placards demanding the withdrawal of the Bihar Special Universities Act 2026. The police eventually packed the group of aggressive protesters into buses. The flashpoint is the state Cabinet's September 23 decision, chaired by chief minister Samrat Choudhary, to establish Maa Sita Women's University in Patna under the new Special Universities Act. The university is intended as Bihar's first dedicated women's higher education institution, with jurisdiction over constituent and affiliated women's colleges in Patna district-excluding those under Patna University. Among the colleges that would be brought under its umbrella are JD Women's College, Ganga Devi Mahila College, Sri Arvind Mahila College, Mahila College Khagaul and RPM College, all currently affiliated to Patliputra University. Teachers and staff insist they do not oppose a women's university in principle. Their objection is that the government is not creating a new institution from the ground up but is instead dismantling the existing administrative structure of well-established colleges and transferring them wholesale. They argued merger of the colleges would erode the autonomy these institutions have long enjoyed, disrupt service conditions of teaching and non-teaching employees, and open the door to further centralisation under the new Act. Many have demanded that the colleges remain under the 1976 framework rather than be shifted into the 2026 special legislation. Saturday's protest was the latest and most confrontational chapter in a campaign that has been building for weeks. Earlier demonstrations saw black-badge marches, human chains and brief road blockades on Bailey Road. On this occasion the organisers had announced a Lok Bhavan march starting from the college at noon, intending to submit a memorandum to the Governor. Police, citing public order concerns and the refusal of protesters to form a negotiating delegation, intervened early. SDM Kritika Mishra later told reporters that the crowd had been uncooperative....