ABVP themselves raise anti-India slogans on campuses, police works with them: Kumar Vishwas

NEW DELHI: The AAP claimed that ABVP activists themselves raise anti-India slogans and foment trouble in educational campuses, a day after violent clashes at Ramjas College in Delhi involving the RSS-backed students body.

The party also hit out at the Centre and the Delhi Police, accusing them of “shielding” the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) activists, who it alleged resort to violence on campuses.

Reacting to yesterday’s violence by ABVP volunteers at Delhi University’s Ramjas College over a seminar invite to JNU students Umar Khalid and Shehla Rashid, AAP leader Kumar Vishwas termed it a “diversionary tactic” by the BJP, which he said has sensed defeat in poll-bound Uttar Pradesh.

“The Delhi Police is under the Centre’s control, but it (the Centre) could not arrest those who raised anti-national slogans in JNU last year as it was busy forming government with PDP’s Mehobooba Mufti in Jammu and Kashmir).

“Their people (the ABVP) go to some campus and raise anti- India slogans and then the ABVP activists themselves resort to violence while the police works with them,” Vishwas alleged.

The party sought to link BJP with a Pakistan-run espionage racket and alleged that the arrested person “printed BJP banners using ISI’s money.” The BJP, however, had denied association with the arrested people.

Eleven people were arrested from different places of Madhya Pradesh on February 9 for being part of an alleged espionage racket being run from Pakistan to collect strategic information on important Indian establishments.

Citing media reports, Vishwas claimed that a member of the IT cell of the Madhya Pradesh BJP was part of the espionage racket.

“He (the arrested person) has nexus with BJP workers. When the JNU incident took place, the same person undertook a protest march.

“On one hand, the BJP workers are taking money from the ISI and in return selling maps of defence installations, hatching conspiracies to kill soldiers and on the other hand these (ABVP) pseudo nationalists are raising slogans of Bharat Mata ki Jai.

“The pseudo nationalist’s BJP posters are being printed by money provided by ISI,” he said.

Another AAP leader and Delhi Labour Minister Gopal Rai also lashed out at the BJP governments in Gujarat and Chhattisgarh for alleged atrocities on farmers and adivasis, respectively.

Interestingly, the AAP is also contesting Gujarat polls scheduled early next year.

Rai said the party has also approached the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) over the alleged atrocities in the two states.