"Sedition Charges Being Distributed Like Prasad ": Kanhaiya Kumar

Communist Party of India leader Kanhaiya Kumar said on Friday that sedition charges are being "distributed freely like prasad" while there has been no case against a police officer arrested along with terrorists in Jammu and Kashmir.

"Sedition charges are being distributed freely like prasad. Social workers are being booked. In Karnataka, school children have been booked for merely staging a play. And this is when a police official arrested along with terrorists is yet to be charged with the same," he said at rally agianst the Citizenship Amendment Act, the National Population Register and National Register of Citizens.

Kanhaiya Kumar, who made an unsuccessful electoral debut in the Lok Sabha polls last year against BJP's Giriraj Singh, attacked the ruling party, calling its members followers of Mahatma Gandhi's assassin Nathuram Godse.

"These Godsewadis, these rioters have placed guns the hands of youths while Union Home Minister Amit Shah has secured the plum post of BCCI secretary for his son," he said.

"The people in power send their children to Oxford, Cambridge and other elite institutions abroad while the ordinary young men and women in the country have to make do with an educational system where a three-year degree course takes five years to complete," he added.

Accusing the government of adopting a "provoke and mislead" policy, he asked why a need for fresh amendment was felt by the Centre despite the citizenship law having been amended by Atal Bihari Vajpayee's government.

"Amit Shah says those opposed to the CAA are against citizenship to refugees. This is false. People wanting Indian citizenship were getting the same under the existing law. The current exercise is an attempt by them to undo the effects of the NRC that took place in Assam as per Supreme Court order. But it backfired, politically, for the BJP,"

"News channels too have become a part of this Hindu versus Muslim game. I say it is fine that work has commenced for building a Ram temple at Ayodhya. But the day-to-day problems faced by people do not deserve any coverage," he said.