LUCKNOW: Union home minister
Rajnath Singh on Saturday said “there will not be any effort to compress the pressure cooker”. His reaction came three days after the Supreme Court observed while hearing the petition of five activists for their alleged links with Maoists that “dissent is the safety valve of democracy”.
“If you (the government) don’t allow the safety valve, the pressure cooker will burst,” the SC had observed while hearing the plea of the activists who were arrested from different parts of the country.
Singh justified the crackdown on the activists saying the government would not tolerate “anyone trying to break the country”. He added that the SC was yet to take a final decision in the case.
Meanwhile, former Union minister P Chidambaram said there was no such thing as ‘urban Naxalism’.
Asked for his reaction on the arrests of five ‘urban Naxals’, Chidambaram chided the reporter for using the term and said it was a media-creation. “The five are social activists and intellectuals. The arrests were made also to instil fear in those speaking against the BJP government,” he added.
