AGENCY
Lucknow: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday broke his silence on the suicide of a dalit scholar in Hyderabad University and expressed grief saying he felt the pain but faced slogans from a handful of students at a convocation ceremony here.
“…when there is news that a youth of my country, Rohith, was forced to commit suicide, what his family must have gone through. Mother India has lost a son. There will be reasons, there will be politics (surrounding it) but the fact remains that a mother has lost her son. I feel the pain very well,” a visibly emotional Modi said.
He was speaking as the Chief Guest at the convocation ceremony of the B R Ambedkar University here, where a couple of students shouted slogans like “Modi murdabad” and “Modi go back, Modi go back” and “inquilab zindabad” as he began his speech.
The two students, who were donning blue stole, meant for Masters degree scholars,were evicted by police and detained.
They have been identified as Ram Karan and Bhuvnesh Arya.
The suicide by Rohith Vemula, a dalit scholar of the Hyderabad Central University, has kicked up a major row with Union HRD Minister Smriti Irani and Labour Minister Bandaru Dattatreya coming under intense attack from political rivals, who have blamed them for the incident and demanded their removal.
University Proctor Kamal Jaiswal said, “we were taken aback. We had taken all precautions. Action will be taken as per rules.” However, Modi did not go into the politics behind Rohith’s suicide.(PTI)
Modi to release digital copies of 100 files on Netaji today
NEW DELHI: Prime Minister Narendra Modi will release the digital copies of 100 files related to Subhash Chandra Bose on his Birth Anniversary tomorrow. “The National Archives of India (NAI) is placing 100 files relating to Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose in public domain after preliminary conservation treatment and digitisation. On the occasion of the birth anniversary of Netaji, the Prime Minister will release the digital copies of these files in public domain,” an official release said Friday.
The initiative will meet the “long-standing public demand” to access these files as well as facilitate scholars to carry out further research on Bose, it said. The NAI also plans to release digital copies of 25 declassified files on Bose in the public domain every month. Modi, in his meeting with members of Bose family here on 14th October, last year, had announced that the government would declassify the files relating to Bose and make them accessible to public.
The first lot of 33 files were declassified by the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) and handed over to the NAI on 4th December, last year. Subsequently, the Ministries of Home Affairs and External Affairs too initiated the process of declassification of files relating to Bose in their respective collection which were then transferred over to the NAI, it added.
