By TCN News,
New Delhi: Succumbing to the campaign launched by activists last week against his nomination for Maulana Mohammad Ali Jauhar Award, former Congress MP and union minister Jagdish Tytler on Thursday evening decided to withdraw from the award ceremony scheduled to be held on 10th Dec. at India Islamic Cultural Centre in New Delhi.
Eminent activists had launched intense campaign and were pursuing seven personalities who have been selected for the award along with Tytler to decline the award. Two of them – senior Urdu journalist Zafar Agha and Gujarat IPS officer Sanjiv Bhatt announced to decline the award. The activists argued that giving Maulana Jauhar Award to Tytler, who is an accused in the 1984 anti-Sikh pogrom, will be an insult to the great freedom fighter.
The activists had first approached the organizers – Maulana Mohammad Ali Jauhar Academy – to not give the award to Tytler, but they had refused to budge. Then the activists started pursuing the seven awardees.
In his letter he wrote to the organizers on 8th Dec., Tytler said: “I don’t want to embarrass the organizers and the awardees because of any kind of pressure. Hence I have decided that I will not join the award ceremony because I don’t want you and the other awardees to face embarrassment.”
In the letter, Tytler rejected allegations about his involvement in the Sikh killings. “…Everyone knows that my name has been cleared by the Hon’ble Court and there was never a case against me and above all there is not a single FIR against me,” Tytler wrote.
The 23rd Maulana Mohammad Ali Jauhar Award program is going to be held on the occasion of 133rd birth anniversary of the Khilafat Movement leader.