The suspension of IAS officer Durga Shakti Nagpal rages on with the issue clearly taking on a communal and political hue.
Samajwadi Party workers and some local villagers from Kadalpur village in Greater Noida, where the officer is said to have razed a wall of a mosque, met UP chief minister Akhilesh Yadav on Sunday here and demanded that action against Ms Nagpal should not be withdrawn.
The SP workers in Kadalpur village also took out a procession demanding permission to build the shrine at the site and justified the action against the official.
Carrying banners thanking the chief minister for ordering the suspension of the officer, the said this would teach a lesson to those who overstepped their brief.
In Lucknow, Muslim cleric Maulana Khalid Rashid Firangi Mahali also justified the suspension of Ms Durga Shakti Nagpal and said that officers who tampered with communal harmony should be severely punished.
He thanked the state government for taking action against her.
In Allahabad, a large group of Muslim women sat on dharna on Sunday, demanded justice for the suspended officer. The group said that Durga Shakti Nagpal should be re-instated without further delay and those who were trying to communalise the issue should be exposed.
Meanwhile, the issue also continues to evoke strong political reactions with the BJP continuing its demonstrations on the issue.
BJP activists in Agar took out a funeral procession of the Akhilesh government and termed it a ‘death of moral values and sense of justice’.
The Congress is also gearing up to raise its voice on the issue and put the state government in the dock. Meanwhile, the Samajwadi Party seems to be in no mood to backtrack on the Durga Nagpal issue. and party MP Naresh Agarwal made it clear that his party would not support the Food Security Bill in “its present form”.