By Abdul Gani, TwoCircles.net
Guwahati: Assam Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi condemned the incident stemming out of a complaint about beef being served at the Kerala House in New Delhi.
In a statement issued here on Tuesday, Gogoi said that a complaint about beef being served in Kerala House and the alacrity with which Delhi Police budged into state-owned Kerala House is an attack on cooperative federalism in our country.
Gogoi said the tenets of democracy allow everyone to profess his or her own religious beliefs and practices and any external control on it is tantamount to violations of the rights of the citizens.
Kerala chief minister Oommen Chandy has accused the Delhi Police of carrying out ‘searches’ at Kerala House and termed the matter ‘unfortunate’.
The Kerala chief minister wrote a letter to PM saying, “I seek the personal intervention of Prime Minister to instruct the Union home minister for taking stringent action against those responsible for trespassing into the premises of the state government property and ensure that this kind of incidents does not occur again”.
The CM also said that Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s message on unity in diversity against the backdrop of incidents of growing intolerance and hatred in the country has not been loud and clear.
Gogoi said that Prime Minister Modi’s Maan Ki Baat radio programme did not articulate the strong resentment brewing in the country in the backdrop of incidents of violence laced with communal and casteist overtones.
“PM Modi’s Maan Ki Baat has failed to send a strong message in the backdrop of volatile situation prevailing in the country with incidents of intolerance and hatred on the rise,” he said.
Chief Minister Gogoi said Prime Minister Modi, who is vocal and decisive in taking quick decisions, shows no signs of alacrity and urgency to rein in the growing incidents of intolerance and hatred that pervade the atmosphere of the country. “There was no sense of urgency in PM Modi’s message, as he did not spell out the line of action to contain the inimical forces that threaten to bring about discord in diversity,” Gogoi asserted.
Gogoi said that when certain forces are trying to impose will on others fraught with dangerous implications for the country, the Prime Minister did not underscore the need to forge in unity to promote diversity.
He said he failed to comprehend as to why the present dispensation at the Centre did not convene a meeting of the National Integration Council to discuss the volatile situation in the country and for adopting pragmatic and effective measures to tide over the situation. “If it is not a proper time to call for a meeting of National Integration Council, then when will the time come?” he wondered.