AHMEDABAD/MEHSANA: Stone-throwing protesters clashed with police firing tear gas in Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s home state on Sunday, the latest caste violence over demands for preferential treatment for jobs and university places.

Clashes also took place in the neighboring city of Surat, forcing authorities to shut down mobile Internet access, police said.

Statewide marches in Gujarat calling for the freeing of Hardik Patel, a young leader of the Patel community who has been in jail since last October on sedition charges, turned violent in the town of Mehsana.

Police fired tear gas, deployed water cannon and staged baton charges against protesters. The local administrator imposed a curfew in Mehsana. Across the state more than 400 protesters were detained.

At least two dozen people were injured in Mehsana, NDTV said in a report that could not immediately be confirmed.

“The Internet has been jammed so that no rumors are spread through WhatsApp and other social sites,” said Mehsana District Collector Lochan Sehra. “Peace should be maintained throughout the city.”

Hardik Patel, 22, emerged overnight last year as leader of a mass movement demanding more government jobs and college places for the Patel, or Patidar, community that makes up 14 percent of Gujarat’s 60 million population.

Last year’s protests caught the state and federal governments off guard, and challenged the promise of new job opportunities made by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who ran Gujarat for 13 years before winning the 2014 general election.

Earlier this year the Jat land-owning caste launched mass protests in another Indian state, Haryana, only backing down when the authorities yielded to their demands for more jobs and opportunities to study.

Police also fired water cannon when violence flared after a rally in the Gujarat state town of Mehsana by thousands of members of the Patidar, or Patel, caste.

Television footage showed police armed with sticks known as lathis chasing crowds through the streets after demonstrators tried to march to a local jail where several caste leaders were being held.

Some 25 protesters were arrested and authorities slapped a curfew on the town and blocked mobile Internet access to try to calm the situation, Mehsana district collector Lochan Sahera said.

“After the rally the Patidars who had gathered in their thousands started marching toward the district jail and when the police tried to stop them, they pelted stones at them,” Sahera told AFP.

Protesters told media they were hit by police with sticks after taking part in a peaceful rally.

Rioting by Patidar members erupted last year in Gujarat over the same issue, leaving at least 10 people dead in the worst violence to hit the state for more than a decade.

The Patidars are one of the western state’s most affluent communities, but they say they are struggling to compete with less privileged castes for jobs.

Local leaders had organized Sunday’s rally to press their demands for changes to the policy by the Gujarat state government and for the release of local leaders.

Hardik Patel, a young firebrand Patidar leader, remains in prison over last year’s violence.

India sets aside a proportion of government jobs and university places for some castes under measures intended to bring victims of the worst discrimination into the mainstream.

But the policy causes deep resentment among other communities, who say it freezes them out.

In February in the northern state of Haryana about 30 people were killed in clashes between police and members of the dominant rural Jat caste over similar demands.