News Analysis India

Tag: Delhi demolition

  • Fashion to give ‘communal colour’ to illegal acts: Naqvi on Shaheen Bagh demolition row

    By PTI

    NEW DELHI: Amid a row over the demolition drive in Shaheen Bagh, Minority Affairs Minister Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi on Tuesday said it has become a fashion to give a “communal colour” to criminal acts, and asserted that “legal action” against “illegal acts” should be supported.

    Protests erupted at Delhi’s Shaheen Bagh, the scene of the epic sit-in against the new citizenship law, on Monday with hundreds of people, including women, physically blocking bulldozers and forcing the local municipal authority to abandon the anti-encroachment drive.

    AAP MLA of the area Amanatullah Khan had on Monday accused that the BJP of using the municipality to “spoil” the environment in Shaheen Bagh and indulging in “Hindu-Muslim rhetoric”.

    Leaders of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), including Khan, and the Congress had reached the spot and staged a dharna.

    Asked about the allegations of Opposition parties such as the AAP and the Congress, Naqvi said it is unfortunate that it has become a fashion to give a “communal colour” to criminal and illegal acts.

    Legal action against illegal acts should be supported and not given a communal colour, the senior BJP leader told PTI.

    “Be it crime, illegal acts, some political parties make it a part of their pseudo-secular agenda,” he said.

    Parodying a popular Bollywood song, Naqvi said of the controversy, “Bulldozer badnaam hua, encroachment tere liye.”

    The minority affairs minister said if someone has committed a crime, an illegal act, then action is taken without discrimination.

    “The constitutional, social and religious rights of minorities were, are and will be protected. Nobody can harm these rights,” he asserted.

    Those who indulge in fear-mongering among minorities, they are not well-wishers of minorities but want to politically exploit them, Naqvi said.

    Asserting that illegal encroachment cannot be a safe investment for anyone, the minister said it has nothing to do with caste, colour or community and action would be taken against anyone, who indulges in it.

    “It is heartening to see that at some places people have themselves cleared encroachments,” he said.

    The Delhi Police had on Monday registered an FIR against AAP MLA Khan and his supporters for allegedly obstructing an anti-encroachment drive in Shaheen Bagh, officials said.

    The South Delhi Municipal Corporation (SDMC) lodged a complaint with the police against Khan and his supporters, accusing them of obstructing its anti-encroachment drive in Shaheen Bagh on Monday.

    As soon as bulldozers rolled into the locality, teeming with police and paramilitary personnel, to pull down alleged illegal structures, hundreds of people gathered on the streets and atop buildings.

    Many raised slogans against the authorities and staged sit-ins on the roads, while a woman protester hopped onto a bulldozer, the earthmoving machine that has emerged as a symbol of government power in the recent months.

  • ‘I will raise difficult issues’: UK PM Boris Johnson on Jahangirpuri controversy

    By PTI

    LONDON: British Prime Minister Boris Johnson on Thursday indicated that he would be raising “difficult issues” when he meets his Indian counterpart Narendra Modi in New Delhi on Friday.

    The difficult issues being referred to is likely to include the controversial demolition of some properties as part of an “anti-encroachment” drive by the BJP-ruled North Delhi Municipal Corporation (NDMC) in the Jahangirpuri area of north-west Delhi, days after communal clashes in the locality.

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    Johnson was responding to questions from the UK media during a visit to a new bulldozer factory in Gujarat’s Halol industrial area near Vadodara set up by British multinational JCB. “We always raise the difficult issues, of course we do, but the fact is that India is a country of 1.35 billion people and it is democratic, it’s the world’s largest democracy,” Johnson was quoted in the ‘Guardian’ newspaper as saying in response to questions.

    The factory visit came under fire on social media over JCB equipment being involved in the “anti-encroachment” demolitions in Delhi, which activists have claimed targeted one particular religious community – an issue being considered by the Supreme Court.

    However, Johnson sought to highlight the new Halol plant as a “living, breathing incarnation of the umbilicus between the UK and India”. “This is a world-leading factory – 600,000 diggers a year coming from India, exported from India to 110 countries with British technology,” he said.

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    The UK media also raised the issue of JCB chairman Anthony Bamford being a donor to Johnson’s Conservative Party and whether the visit was motivated by that connection. “No, he chose to go to the JCB factory because it is a very good illustration of UK business, working with India and the Indian government to benefit both the UK and India,” Johnson’s official spokesperson told the ‘Guardian’.