May further delay Kanhaiya’s Bihar visit

PATNA: Jawaharlal Nehru University Students’ Union president Kanhaiya Kumar will visit Bihar anytime soon but only after his safety is assured.

Stating this, CPI national secretary Amarjeet Kaur on Sunday said Kanhaiya, who is out on six-month interim bail after being booked by the Delhi police on ‘sedition’ charges, was unsafe given the death threats and bounty placed on him by various organisations, especially those with a saffron hue.

“An unknown organisation is offering ₹11 lakh as reward to whoever kills Kanhaiya. BJP had to expel its own youth wing leader for offering ₹5 lakh to anyone who cut Kanhaiya’s tongue. Such circumstances make it unsafe for Kanhaiya to step out of JNU, let alone Delhi,” said Kaur. “He denied security inside the campus. But his safety outside is not assured. Once it is, he will surely come to his home state,” she said.

Kaur also refuted claims that CPI would cash in on the support Kanhaiya shored during and after his imprisonment on sedition allegations. “Unlike the BJP, we consider him a student leader and protector of Indian Constitution from forces that seek imposition of their own idea of nationalism on the country,” she added.

She said JNU’S admission policy, which allowed meritorious students from any background to get quality education and express their views with freedom, frightened the BJP, as it wanted to commercialise education by bringing in foreign institutions. “The JNU row was pre-planned by BJP and the saffron-hued ABVP, which called in mediapersons to cover the alleged anti-india slogans.”