Strict action should be taken against anti-national people: Rahul

Shah wondered if the Congress leader had “lent his voice to the separatists”. “If anyone is involved in anti-national activities, he should be punished but nationalism can’t be an excuse to impose a particular ideology on students, ” Rahul said.

President Pranab Mukherjee will on Thursday meet several leaders and journalists in connection with the JNU controversy and violence in courts. On being asked why the students were being targeted, he said that it is due to the voices raised by students regarding the case of Rohith Vemula, the UGC protests, and the policies of the government in general.

During his visit to the JNU campus, Rahul Gandhi compared the current government at the centre with Hitler’s Germany.

Asked about reports of lack of evidence against JNU student union president Kanhaiya Kumar, arrested on the charge of sedition, Sharma showed videos in his mobile which purportedly had Kanhaiya shouting anti-national slogans.

Police, meanwhile, claimed the student leader charged with sedition had raised anti-India slogans.

Kumar belongs to the All India Students Federation, the student wing of the Communist Party of India.

In a new twist to the ongoing saga involving the battle of ideologies in Jawaharlal Nehru University and its spillover into national politics and riots at Patiala House courts in Delhi, the Supreme Court will hear a petition on the subject tomorrow.

The Congress memorandum also expressed concern over the attack on journalists, saying it did not “bode well for democracy”.

He was sent to three-day police custody after the Delhi Police told the court that they wanted to probe his alleged links to “terrorist groups”. “They should join the investigation so that no innocent is stuck”, he said.

“The way journalists were assaulted, it is absolutely wrong and we condemn it”, said Gandhi who is visiting Assam for a political rally.

Seeking President’s intervention, the party said as representatives of people, it can not “stand by quietly” as the government fails to do its duty.

He also accused the NDA government and PM Narendra Modi of failing to keep its promises made to the people, prior to Lok Sabha elections.

“Those who killed thought process of Mahatma Gandhi and those who are inheritors of thought process of Nathu Ram Godse (who assassinated Mahatma Gandhi) need not teach the nation and the Congress new definition of patriotism”, Congress spokesman Randeep Singh Surjewala told reporters here.

Taking a swipe at his critics, the congress vice president also said ” Nationalism is in my blood, my family sacrificed again & again for this nation”.