Meerut:
Hours after Union Home Ministry directed all state government to deal strictly with people demolishing statues of political leaders or ideological figures, miscreants demolished Dalit icon and leader Dr B R Ambedkar’s statue in Uttar Pradesh’s Meerut on Wednesday. People in large numbers from the Dalit community took to the roads in Mawana on learning about the vandalisation and blocked traffic for hours. According to police, the statue was vandalised on early hours of Wednesday. However, local Dalit leaders claim the vandalisation was done in broad daylight. Vandalisation of statues of ideological leaders and icons were first reported from Tripura soon after state assembly elections were announced. According to CPI (M) leaders BJP workers in large number pulled down Russian revolutionary and Communist icon Vladimir Lenin’s statue in Belonia on Monday and the very next day another statue of the leader was vandalised in South Tripura. On Tuesday morning, BJP national secretary H Raja on his Facebook post updated the video of pulling down of Lenin’s statue and had threatened to pull down Periyar statues installed in Tamil Nadu. He however deleted the post later. In the evening, Periyar’s statue installed in a municipal corporation office in Vellore was razed. A BJP party worker was arrested by police. In retaliatory reaction, CPI (M) workers vandalised and blackened statue of RSS founder member Syama Prasad Mukherjee on Tuesday. Prime Minister Narendra Modi called a meeting with the Union Home Ministry and seeked details of statue vandalisation cases. He directed the ministry to deal strictly with miscreants involved in razing of statues.
