Prime Minister Narendra Modi today condemned the destruction of public property during violent agitations against the Citizenship Amendment Act over the last few weeks, asking protesters to introspect if their actions have been “good or not”.
“I want to ask people who resorted to violence in Uttar Pradesh to sit at home and ask themselves whether what they did is good or not. They destroyed buses and public property that belongs to the future generation,” he said at the foundation stone-laying ceremony of the Atal Bihari Vajpayee Medical University in Lucknow.
The Prime Minister asked the protesters to keep in mind that everybody in the country is entitled to a secure environment. “To get a safe environment is our right, and it is our duty to respect the law-and-order machinery that is responsible for our security. I want to tell every resident of Uttar Pradesh that after Independence, we only insisted on our rights. But the time has come to also put emphasis on our duties,” he said, praising the Uttar Pradesh police for doing a “good job”.
Uttar Pradesh witnessed some of the bloodiest clashes across the country after the parliament passed the Citizenship Amendment Act, with 15 people being killed across the state so far. After critics accused the state police of using lethal force to quell agitations, officers have now admitted to shooting at protesters.
In his address, PM Modi cited how his government had resolved several contentious issues in a peaceful manner. “The Ram Janmabhoomi issue was resolved peacefully. Article 370 was an old disease, and it was our responsibility to resolve it,” he said, referring to the scrapping of Jammu and Kashmir’s special status earlier this year.
Source: NDTV
