BJP govt is branding JNU as anti-national to implement RSS agenda: Mayawati

Lucknow, Feb 15: BSP President Mayawati today alleged the NDA government had branded JNU as "anti-national" to implement the "extreme and offensive agenda" of the RSS and termed as "political conspiracy" the arrest of JNU Students' Union president Kanhaiya Kumar on sedition charges.

She also said the role of central minister or central government after the suicide of dalit student Rohith Vemula in Hyderabad to the JNU incident has been very negative, which was indicative of "a very dangerous trend".

"In one stroke, the

-led government has branded the prestigious institution like JNU as anti-national in order to implement the extreme and offensive agenda of the RSS," Mayawati said in a statement here.

"The arrest of JNU Students' Union president Kanhaiya Kumar on charges of sedition looks wrong in the first place itself.

Police has made the arrest on sedition charges under political pressure. He is nowhere seen in the video raising the objectionable slogans," she said, adding it seems that Modi government was using a "new weapon of declaring its opponents as anti-national".

Attacking the Centre, Mayawati said on the one hand BJP government was arresting those who organised the event where the Parliament attack convict Afzal Guru was termed as martyr and on the other it was bent upon having an alliance in Jammu and Kashmir with the party which had opposed capital punishment to Guru terming him as a martyr.

"The BJP's love and devotion for the country seems very strange," she said. The BSP chief alleged that the central government was out to damage JNU.

This institution is regarded as very prestigious the world over and it is "most unfortunate" that the charge of it being anti-national has been made by people at the top most level, she added.

PTI