Citizens’ Responsibility To Take Care Of Public Property, Says PM Narendra Modi On Citizenship Law Protests

PM Narendra Modi today asked people not to destroy public property in protests

Lucknow:

Prime Minister Narendra Modi today condemned the destruction of public property during violent protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act over the last few weeks, asking alleged vandals to introspect if their actions have been “good or not”.

“I want to ask people who resorted to violence in Uttar Pradesh to sit at home and ask themselves whether what they did is good or not. They destroyed buses and public property that belongs to their children,” he said at the foundation-laying ceremony of the Atal Bihari Vajpayee Medical University in Lucknow.  

The Prime Minister asked the protesters to keep in mind that everybody in the country is entitled to a safe environment. “To get a safe environment is our right, but it is pur duty to respect the law-and-order machinery, which is responsible for our security,” he said, adding that the Uttar Pradesh police is doing a “good job”.

Uttar Pradesh witnessed some of the bloodiest clashes across the country after the parliament passed the Citizenship Amendment Act, which aims to expedite citizenship for non-Muslim migrants from Bangladesh, Afghanistan and Pakistan, with 15 people being killed across the state so far.

In his address, PM Modi cited how his government had resolved several contentious issues in a peaceful manner through its tenure. “The Ram Janmabhoomi issue was resolved peacefully. Article 370 was an old disease, and it was our responsibility to resolve it,” he said, referring to the scrapping of Jammu and Kashmir’s special status earlier this year.