Prime Minister Narendra Modi, today faced some tough time when when Pro Dalit supporters raised slogan against him during speech at Babasaheb Bhimrao Ambedkar University in Lucknow.
He was addressing the convocation as a chief guest on convocation when a group of people raised slogan against him. Later the protesters, were escorted out of the hall.
“Narendra Modi Murdabad,” students raised.
Meanwhile, prime minister Modi also broke his silence on the suicide of Dalit scholar in Hyderabad.
“When I received this news that a young man Rohith committed suicide, I thought about the condition of his parents,” said Modi.
Modi hinted that these issues should not be politicised.
“There must have been reasons, politics is different. The truth that India lost her son,” said Modi.
The PM continued speaking through the brief commotion, in his speech reaching out to the family of r Rohith Vemula, who committed suicide at a Hyderabad University on Sunday.
The protesters were seated in the last rows of the auditorium and were escorted out swiftly. The police is questioning them. It is not clear yet whether they were students.
“Politics aside, a mother lost her son. I share the family’s pain,” PM Modi said, in his first comments on Rohith’s death, over which there have been massive student protests and much anger directed at two of his ministers, Bandaru Dattatreya and Smriti Irani.
The 26-year-old research student committed suicide after he and four other Dalit students were suspended over clashes with activists of the ABVP, the BJP’s students’ wing. Students and opposition parties allege that Rohith and the others were subjected to caste discrimination.
Students are protesting Rohith’s suicide, demaning a probe into it. HRD Minister Smriti Irani said it was not a Dalit vs non-Dalit battle.
Mr Dattatreya, labour minister, has been accused of compelling the university to punish the Dalit students. Education minister Smriti Irani has also drawn protests for saying that the suicide had nothing to do with a caste battle.