– Congress leader Ghulam Nabi Azad demands apology from Smriti Irani.
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HRD Minister Smriti Irani defended her comments about goddess Durga and said “I was asked yesterday pointedly whether I was authentic”.
Irani, he said, had read out “insulting” comments made against Goddess Durga “verbatim” in the House hurting sentiments and sought a ruling from the Chair as to whether such comments made outside Parliament against any religious figure or a deity can be read out inside the House. Deputy chairman of Rajya Sabha P J Kurien even offered to expunge the minister’s remark in a bid to pacify the opposition. Whether Irani read out from a highly controversial pamphlet to provoke, or to appease some section of the people, was not clear but what was clear was that she was no push-over. Two days ago, during the course of her statement in the RS, Irani had stated that if her answer would not satisfy Mayawati then she would chop her head off and lay it in front of the Dalit leader.
Communist Party of India-Marxist secretary general Sitaram Yechury on Friday questioned Irani’s speech in the Rajya Sabha on Mahishasur, saying, “Why are gods and demons being discussed in this house?”
Radhika Vemula, flanked by her other son Raja, said BJP will be “decimated to the ground” if Prime Minister Narendra Modi does not take any action against Irani and her ministerial colleague Bandaru Dattatreya who had written multiple letters to her seeking action against Rohith, alleging anti-national activities.
For a second straight day Ms Irani made a strong defence of the government’s actions with regard to the JNU issue and suicide of dalit student Rohith Vemula in Hyderabad University in the face of an intense attack by the Opposition.
In one of the fieriest debates in the recent times, the issue of Rohit Vemula, Dalit scholar who committed suicide, and JNU episode rocked both the houses of the parliament as Opposition and the treasury benches traded charges.
However, Mayawati was not satisfied and again accused the government of being “anti-Dalits”.
“What happened in Patiala House (court) is condemnable”.
His reference to “vandalism” was to the incidents on February 15 of some students and media persons being roughed up at Patiala House courts complex where Jawaharlal Nehru University Students’ Union president Kanhaiya Kumar, arrested for sedition, was being presented before a judge.
With regard to Jaitley’s comment that he should condemn anti-India statements, Yechury said he has already done it.
“We all know what (executed parliament attack convict) Afzal Guru represented…”
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“We organised the event for three consecutive years and the idea was not to celebrate his martyrdom actually but because Mahishasura is worshipped as their ancestors by a certain tribe”. But what happened in JNU, was it freedom of expression or expression of freedom from the country?
