Owaisi wants Rajnath Singh to resolve AMU Kashmiri students'

AIMIM president Asaduddin Owaisi Monday said the row in the Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) over sedition charges against three Kashmiri students should be resolved with the intervention of Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh and the university authorities.

Kashmiri students should continue their studies in AMU, he said adding it was in national interest and the interest of Kashmir that the students pursue their academics and excel.

"I hope that the Vice Chancellor of AMU, the faculty of AMU and the Home Minister and the Joint Secretary who looks after Kahsmir in MHA would sit down and resolve this issue," he told reporters here.

The Hyderabad MP expressed confidence that the issue would be resolved with all the concerned people talking to the students.

He also said the issue had been blown out of proportion.

Kashmiri students studying at the university in Uttar Pradesh organised a protest march on the campus Monday against slapping of sedition charges on three of their peers and alleged harassment by local authorities.

On Saturday, sedition cases were registered against the three students for allegedly raising "anti-India" slogans and trying to hold a prayer meeting for Hizbul Mujahideen commander Manan Bashir Wani, who was killed in an encounter with the security forces in north Kashmir.

The protesting students in a memorandum said if the sedition charges were not withdrawn, more than 1,200 Kashmiri students would leave the campus on October 17.

Replying to query, Owaisi said no one had the right to question the loyalty and integrity of any Kashmiri student.

Other countrymen should go out of their way to welcome students from Jammu and Kashmir and north eastern states, he said.

Owaisi wanted the BJP and the Centre to clarify whether an assurance was given to the Bangladesh government that no illegal Bangladeshi migrant would be sent back.

A top Bangladeshi official has recently stated that Prime Minister Narendra Modi has personally assured premier Sheikh Hasina that people excluded from the National Register of Citizens list would not be deported to the country.