Taking the political battle over the JNU issue to the Opposition camp on Thursday in the Rajya Sabha, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley criticised Congress leadership including its vice president Rahul Gandhi for giving “respectability” to those trying to break the country by visiting the varsity campus.
Taking part in the debate on the raging controversy following the arrest of JNU Students President Kanhaiya Kumar and some others, Jaitley urged the Congress to make its stand clear on elements trying to destabilise the country and quipped its leadership jumped the gun by “acting first and then thinking over it.”
The BJP leader, however, refrained from naming the Congress leadership but Congress leader Anand Sharma took exception to Jaitley’s observation. Sharma said he had visited the JNU campus along with Rahul on the invitation of JNU Teachers’ Association.
Jaitley, who is leader of the House, Rajya Sabha, said with elections in West Bengal are round the corner, Congress and left Parties were trying to score political points and said the main Opposition party should make its stand clear on terrorism.
He said the Congress lost one Prime Minister and one former Prime Minister in terrorist act and the party should be more “vigorous” in fight against terrorism and back the BJP on the issue.
“The tragedy of Bengal is that there are three Congress parties — the Congress, the Trinamool Congress and Congress Marxist.” Trinamool Congress leader Derek O’Brien took objection to this and said his party was separate since 1998.
Contending that developments of February 9 on JNU were serious, Jaitley read out pamphlets carrying anti-India material which were circulated in the campus. “The core question is, are we going to give respectability to those whose primary ideology is that they want to break this country,”
Referring to slogans which called for war for destruction of the country and lauded terrorists who had been convicted by the highest judiciary, Jaitley questioned: “Can hate speech be called free speechIJ”
He noted that being a mainstream party, Congress does not have the history of supporting the “fringe.”
Maintaining that the country’s legal system went out of the way to hear several petitions of Yakub Memon after he was sentenced to death for Mumbai serial blasts, Jaitley said ultra left wings were trying to subvert Constitution by terming Memon, Maqbool Butt and Afzal Guru’s hanging as judicial killings.
Urging the Opposition to refrain from attributing motives to police action in JNU, the BJP leader asked them not to “camouflage” the offence at JNU, saying “its a very serious offence...One is jihadist, the other is maoist. It’s an alliance of the two. You have been in power for long, you should have thought before making a visit to the JNU campus.”
With several Opposition MPs questioning the police entry into the varsity campus without its Vice Chancellor’s permission, Jaitley shot back the campus was not a “sovereign territory” like some foreign embassy.
He then cited a Parliament Question of 1983 in which the then Indira Gandhi Government had justified entry of police in JNU and arrest of 350 students, including 50 girls, after the Vice Chancellor was gheraoed.
Giving an instance, he said when Naxals killed more than 70 security personnel in an ambush a few years ago and Home Minister P Chidambaram offered to resign, Jaitely as leader of Opposition in the Rajya Sabha opposed such a move as the Minister’s resignation would mean victory for the Naxals.
While disapproving violence in Patiala House courts when the JNU Students Union president was produced, Jaitley, however, remarked “vandalism is condemnable but sedition is free speech.”
Invoking B R Ambedkar, he said the maker of Constitution had warned of threats country faces from the inside.
He said Ambedkar had also referred to people who wanted free speech to overthrow the State. Elements like maoists wanted to use provisions like free speech to overthrow the system of Parliamentary democracy because they don’t believe in it, he said.
As regards extending support to PDP in Jammu and Kashmir, the BJP leader his party like Congress believed that a national mainstream party has to rule the state along with the main party there be it National Conference or PDP. “We are not all apologetic as we are fighting separatists there,” he said.