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Mahishasura event: JNU students deny Irani claim

She said it showed the “depraved mentality” of a section of JNU students.

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Questioning Smriti’s reply where she said it was a single judge commission and Mayawati’s demand can not be accepted, Mayawati said, “The single judge commission has Justice Roopanwal who is from the upper caste”.

Mayawati and Smriti Irani once again crossed swords in the Rajya Sabha on Friday with the BSP leader asking whether the HRD minister will keep her word on “chopping off” her head, as she was not satisfied with her response on Rohith Vemula suicide case. “Clearly, the Minister has misused her government position and power to put a “sarkari” seal on the highly questionable order of the “High Level Enquiry Committee”.

Taking a dig at the critics who had described her as an uneducated minister, Smriti quoted the famous lines “fair is foul and foul is fair” from William Shakespeare’s Macbeth to allege that the opposition was turning around the facts in the Vemula case to malign her. Many things have been said about Prophet Mohammad and Virgin Mary but we never mention them in the House. “Also the pamphlet that Smriti Iraniji was reading in Parliament wasn’t written or distributed by us”, Anil Kumar of JNDSU.

Irani cited her ministry’s decision to forward Congress MP Hanumantha Rao’s letter on Hyderabad University to the institution.

The cause was a reading from a pamphlet issued by a section of the JNU students, depicting Goddess Durga in rather poor light. “I miss today [Trinamool MPs] Sugata Bose and Saugata Roy in the House – champions of free speech, because I want to know if they will discuss this particular topic… on the streets of Kolkata”.

The Asurs believe that the Devi Mahatmya story of the Markandeya Purana, which describes the birth of Durga and her nine-day long battle with Mahishasura, is biased.

What is that authentication, whom they are quoting, what is being said?…

Congress leader M Mallikarjun Kharge said nobody should politicise the issues of Hyderabad central University and JNU.

The “depraved mentality” that Irani so vociferously railed against in parliament actually has a place in the traditions of eastern India’s Asur tribe, for whom the festival has a very different connotation. He said it was duty of entire parliament to speak with one voice against those who had raised anti-national slogans.

“What happened in Patiala House (court) is condemnable”.

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“Of course vandalism should be condemned”, Jaitley said. About the JNU kerfuffle, this highly cosseted pocket of leftist activism in the heart of the national capital seems to live by its own rules, observing every year for the last three years the death anniversary of Afzal Guru only to condemn the Indian State and to seek redemption only in its disintegration. “Was it freedom of speech or speech for freedom?” he asked.

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