Impasse in RS continues: Govt, Oppn condemn vandalisation of statues

Parliament failed to transact any business for the third day, the lawmakers exchanging barbs over statues of different political leaders being vandalised over recent days. 

Amid all this, several parties announced their list of candidates to the 58 Rajya Sabha seats slated for election on March 23. 

The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) decided to send finance minister Arun Jaitley to the RS from Uttar Pradesh; currently, he is a member from Gujarat. Petroleum minister Dharmendra Pradhan will now represent Madhya Pradesh; currently, he is a member from Bihar.

Law minister Ravi Shankar Prasad and health minister Jagat Prakash Nadda will continue to represent Bihar and Himachal Pradesh, respectively.

The Bahujan Samaj Party had on Tuesday announced the name of former legislator and Etawah politician Bhimrao Ambedkar from UP, and has sought the support of the Congress, Samajwadi Party (SP) and Rashtriya Lok Dal. He filed his nomination papers on Wednesday.

The Biju Janata Dal (BJD), which rules in Odisha, nominated journalist Soumya Ranjan Patnaik, academician Achyuta Samanta and party spokesperson Prasanta Nanda as nominees for the election from the state. Patnaik is the son-in-law of the late J B Patnaik, former state chief minister, and editor of a leading Odia daily. Samanta is the founder of Kalinga Institute of Industrial Technology and Kalinga Institute of Social Sciences. The two were inducted into the party on Wednesday. The BJD is set to win all the three RS seats at stake; of the 147 members of the state's legislative assembly, it has 118.

The SP said it would field Jaya Bachchan on the lone seat the party can hope to win from Uttar Pradesh. Several of the SP's current RS members, including ex-minister Naresh Agrawal, are set to lose their membership. The Shiv Sena's Anil Desai also filed his nomination papers on Wednesday.

In Parliament, and outside, political parties expressed concern at the desecration of statues and targeted each other. On Wednesday, a bust of Jana Sangh founder Syama Prasad Mookerjee was defaced in Kolkata. That was after two statues of Lenin, an iconic leader of the communist movement, were razed in Tripura, in the aftermath of the BJP’s electoral win in that state. 

On Tuesday, a statue of Periyar, founder of the Dravidian movement in Tamil Nadu, was desecrated in Chennai. And, there were reports of an Ambedkar statue defaced in UP.

Kolkata's police said it had arrested seven people belonging to a Left-leaning group for defacing the bust of Mookerjee. There were protests across Tamil Nadu at the Periyar desecration. 

Prime Minister Narendra Modi condemned the various acts of vandalism and warned of stern action against those found guilty. Modi also spoke to home minister Rajnath Singh about the issue, according to an official statement. The latter's ministry asked all states to prevent such incidents.

BJP national chief Amit Shah termed the desecration of Lenin's statues in Tripura and Periyar's bust in Tamil Nadu "extremely unfortunate", and asserted any party member found involved in destroying a statue was to face severe action. However, Shah said the BJP would not take action against one of its national secretaries, H Raja, whose Facebook post was considered to have incited the vandalism of Periyar's bust. However, the party's unit in Tamil Nadu expelled a party worker, R Muthuraman, who was arrested on Tuesday for the act. 

Raja blamed the staff managing his Facebook account for the controversial post and expressed regret. There were protests, including by workers of the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, across Tamil Nadu. In a related incident, unidentified people hurled petrol bombs at the BJP office in Coimbatore, police said.

BSP chief Mayawati said the BJP should stop issuing statements and take steps to end the political violence.