PM Narendra Modi strongly Disapproves Vandalism of Statues

New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi has strongly disapproved the incidents of vandalism reported from across the country and asked the Home Ministry on Wednesday 7^th March 2018 to take strong action.

PM Modi spoke to Home Minister Rajnath Singh over the issue following which the Home Ministry issued an advisory to the states asking them to prevent such incidents. The MHA has said that persons indulging in such acts must be sternly dealt with and booked under relevant provisions of law.

BJP chief Amit Shah terms as extremely unfortunate vandalisation of statues in some states. "The recent issue on destroying of statues is extremely unfortunate. We as a party do not support the bringing down of anybody’s statue," Shah tweeted.

In another incident of vandalisation, a statue of Bharatiya Jana Sangh founder Shyama Prasad Mookerjee was damaged at Jadavpur University in West Bengal on Wednesday, 7^th March 2018.

Police said a group of students blackened the face of the statue and tried to bring it down. Six students have been detained.

This incident comes after a statue of Dravidian movement leader Periyar  

Ramaswamy was razed in Vellore and two Lenin statues were damaged in Tripura.

The Lenin statues were razed in Tripura and the statue of Periyar was vandalised by two men in Tamil Nadu.

According to police, the glasses and the nose of the Periyar statue inside Tirupathur Corporation Office in Vellore were damaged by the vandals around 9 pm on Tuesday, 6^th March 2018. The men were caught by locals before they could inflict further damage and handed over to the police.

The vandalism attempt came hours after senior BJP leader H Raja said Periyar was "casteist" and called for the reformist's statue to be "destroyed" in a Facebook post. He deleted the post after facing a backlash.

“Who is Lenin? What is the relevance he holds in India? What is the link between communalism and India? Lenin’s statues were destroyed in Tripura, tomorrow, in Tamil Nadu, casteist Periyar’s statues will be destroyed,” wrote Raja.

The Facebook post was in reference to the incident in south Tripura, where alleged BJP supporters used a JCB to bring down a statue of communist revolutionary Lenin on Monday 5^th March 2018, two days after the party won the assembly elections in the state. On Tuesday 6^th March 2018, another Lenin statue was razed to the ground.

The Periyar reference in Raja’s post was heavily criticised online, following which, the leader took it down. He has reportedly said that someone else had inadvertently posted it on his page.

However BJP distanced itself from Raja’s statement