From bounties to death threats, BJP mounts full-scale attack
Adityanath says ‘elements like Jinnah will be buried’, VK Singh attacks JNU students
GORAKHPUR/VRINDAVAN/VARANASI: Senior BJP leaders launched a frontal attack on student leader Kanhaiya Kumar on Saturday, with Union minister VK Singh and party MP Yogi Adityanath targeting “anti-national activities” on campuses in the country.
Union minister VK Singh berated Kumar for saying his icon was Dalit scholar Rohith Vemula, whose suicide in Hyderabad university sparked a debate over campus discrimination. Singh said Vemula had organised a meeting in support of the 1993 Mumbai blasts convict Yakub Memon.
“I have to say that Rohith Vemula too had organised a seminar on Yakub Menon. Do our youths have to follow icons who praise terrorists and talk about dividing the nation,” said the former army chief, in his address at a two-day convention of the BJP’S youth wing in Vrindavan attended by party chief Amit Shah.
Kumar, the president of the JNU students’ union, was arrested on sedition charges last month after police said he participated in an event on the campus where antiindian slogans were shouted. Kumar denies this. But his arrest has sparked unprecedented political jousting over what constitutes nationalism and free speech.
Adityanath, a controversial MP from Gorakhpur in UP, said “Jinnahs” would not be allowed to take birth in educational institutions of India, referring to the first PM of Pakistan blamed by many for the 1947 Partition of India on religious lines.
“If such elements were born in premier institutions, they would be buried,” he told reporters in Gorakhpur.
Earlier in the day, posters appeared in Delhi in the name of a little-known organisation offering ₹11 lakh to anyone who kills the JNU student leader.
The concerted attack on Kumar, released on bail for six months in a sedition case, came a day after he vowed to continue his “movement” till the Bjp-led government at the Centre was ousted from power.