BJP calls on opposition to take down elements trying to 'break India'

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Saturday called on opposition parties to take down elements who are trying to break India, adding that the Congress must refrain from doing politics on the matter of Jawaharlal Nehru University students' union (JNUSU) president Kanhaiya Kumar, who is booked on sedition charges.

"They go and give respectability through their leaders like Rahul Gandhi, Arvind Kejriwal and Sitaram Yechury...we need to step them out also. Therefore the BJP has raised this. The political parties, particularly the Opposition parties should not give respectability to those who want to break India," BJP leader Siddharth Nath Singh told ANI.

"This is exactly what the BJP had been raising. There is a mindset, there is a seed, which is been planted due to the various political ideologies, which is certainly extreme Leftist...the Maoist ideology, which is being planted in these university campuses. We need to stem them out. Those political parties had jumped when there were slogans, posters, pamphlets which talk about breaking India," he added.

Singh further stated that Kanhaiya's case is in the court and it is the party's stand to give a fair trial in the case.

"Those who are guilty will be punished, irrespective of whether it is Kanhaiya or somebody else and those who are not guilty will be spared. So that case goes on a fair trial manner. The Congress must refrain from doing politics on it. The Congress jumping into the entire thing is adding fuel to the fire. We must allow things to calm down and the law of the land take its own course," Singh said.

Kanhaiya is among the six JNU students who have been accused of sedition over a controversial February 9 event that marked the anniversary of the hanging of terrorist Afzal Guru, and during which anti-India slogans were raised. He was attacked by lawyers at a lower court last week.

Five other students accused of sedition surfaced on campus on February 21 after being missing since February 12.

Two of them - Umar Khalid and Anirban Bhattacharya - surrendered at the university campus on Tuesday night after their request to surrender at a secret location was rejected by the High Court.

Another student, Ashutosh, joined the police probe on the event today. He is likely to be asked to identity who raised anti-national slogans at the event.