New Delhi, Aug 1 (IANS) Several opposition leaders on Saturday criticised Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s video message to youth where he forgave those who abused him during the nationwide agitation over paper leaks, calling it the Centre’s “sheer panic” and asking the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led Union government to instead apologise to the youth for the alleged police excesses and to those families whose children committed suicide.
Speaking to IANS, Congress leader Sandeep Dikshit said that as far as abuses are concerned, “I condemn such language, including those uttered by politicians.”
However, Dikshit added: “BJP leaders have often abused Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru and other Congress leaders, we never saw the Prime Minister (Narendra Modi) getting affected by those. In politics if you put a seal on low level (of language), that becomes a standard.”
“This (kind of language) was started by Aam Aadmi Party Chief Arvind Kejriwal in 2011 and then carried on by people related to the BJP and RSS,” the Congress leader alleged.
Samajwadi Party (SP) MP Rajeev Rai remarked that Prime Minister Modi is not seen attending Parliament proceedings despite the Monsoon Session being underway, however, “he does put up social media videos at night”.
“This shows the sheer amount of panic. He (PM Modi) can come to the Parliament and apologise to the students, to those young girls for whom he had said ‘Beti Bachao Beti Padhao’, we will support him,” he told IANS.
Trinamool Congress MP Saugata Roy asserted that PM Modi’s statement doesn’t hold much importance since Union Home Minister Amit Shah has not yet “apologised” for the alleged police excesses against the student protesters.
SP spokesperson Fakhrul Hasan Chand questioned the Union government over several students committing suicides in the aftermath of the May 3 NEET paper leak while demanding it to apologise to the bereaved families.
“Exam papers kept getting leaked during the regime of the BJP-led government due to which the youth had to hit the streets,” he remarked.
Chand also said: “Though PM Modi has forgiven those students who abused him and even they have apologised, but the question remains that why at all did the youth have to come out on the streets?”
Adding to the criticism, CPI-M leader Hannan Mollah said: “Students have been protesting for so long but unfortunately he (PM Modi) was silent then…now he has become generous and is talking to the children. This is not the way, if you keep silence for long and if you become generous when things go out of hand, it comes across as acting and not real work.”
In a video message put up on his official Instagram account on Friday, PM Modi said that he wanted to forgive all those children who had abused not only him but also his late mother.
–IANS
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