Accepting pro-Afzal Guru slogans is not tolerance, says Venkaiah

Appealing to the students across the country to condemn strongly the recent incident at JNU, Union Minister for Urban Development and Parliamentary Affairs M. Venkaiah Naidu on Thursday said tolerance did not mean accepting in silence slogans in support of ‘desh drohis’ (traitors).

“How can we keep mum when slogans were raised in support of Afzal Guru, who was hanged for attacking Parliament after clemency petition was rejected by the President of India,” he asked at a function organised here to launch work on R&D lab of SAMEER and a MoU between VUDA and STPI for building an incubation tower.

He said the meeting on JNU campus was held with the agenda of discussing ‘brahminical culture’ but ended up with slogans eulogising Afzal Guru. Slogans such as ‘Bharat ki barbadi tak jung rahega zari,’ and ‘Afzal hum sharam hein, tera katil zinda hein’ were raised at the meeting.

Mr. Naidu said there was an urgent need to isolate such elements who were against India’s integrity and sovereignty and declared that they would award the stringent punishment to all those involved in ‘unseemly and highly condemnable’ incidents on JNU campus.

Union Minister for Communications and IT Ravi Shankar Prasad, who was present, described the developments in JNU as ‘shameful’ and said Afzal Guru was the main conspirator in the attack on the Parliament and the Supreme Court had rejected review petitions against his execution.

He said some parties were trying to politicise the JNU incident and condemned that all those who were supporting anti-national forces should be punished as per law.

At the same meeting, Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu said that while NDA at the Centre and TDP-BJP coalition in the State were striving hard for development, the Opposition parties were indulging in ‘disruptive’ politics.