The controversy over Pakistan’s founder Mohammad Ali Jinnah’s portrait in the union hall of Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) refuses to die down. Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath said that there was no question of eulogising, or honouring Jinnah in India.
Talking to a news channel shortly before his departure for Karnataka on Thursday, the Uttar Pradesh chief minister said that an inquiry has been ordered into the incidents of violence in AMU on Wednesday and further action will be taken on getting the report. The report is expected to be
sent to the government on Friday, sources said.
Yogi Adityanath will be in Karnataka for three days where he will campaign for the Bharatiya Janata Party in the forthcoming assembly elections in the
southern state.
Even as the situation in AMU continued to remain tense but calm, a day after Wednesday’s violence in which about a dozen persons were injured, hundreds of students had assembled at Baba Syed gate.
Mohd Ali Jinnah’s portrait, reports said had been hanging in the union hall since 1938. The BJP MP from Aligarh, Satish Gautam, recently wrote a letter to the AMU VC in which he objected to Jinnah’s portrait in the students’ union hall of the university.
Reports said about 41 people, including 28 students and 13 policemen, were injured in Wednesday’s violence which was sparked off following protests, reportedly, by activists of Hindu Yuva Vahini, who tried to enter the union hall and demanded immediate removal of the portrait.
The violence preceded the function which was to be held to confer lifetime membership of AMU on former vice president of India, Hamid Ansari. The function was called off following Wednesday’s violence.
The controversy over Jinnah’s portrait seems to have hit the ruling party as well with the state labour minister Swami Prasad Maurya under fire for referring to Jinnah as a “mahapurush” (eminent person ). BJP’s Rajya Sabha MP Harinath Singh Yadav has demanded the expulsion of Maurya from the party.
Maurya had questioned the Aligarh MP’s objection to Jinnah’s portrait in AMU’s students’ union hall. The labour minister was also assailed by his
ministerial colleague and president of Suheldev Bhartiya Samaj Party, Om Prakash Rajbhar, who took a dig at Maurya for praising Jinnah.
Meanwhile, heavy police force and contingents of Provincial Armed Constabulary ( PAC) and Rapid Action Force (RAF) have been deployed in AMU. Section 144 has been imposed in Aligarh town as a precautionary measure.