[1]Thiruvananthapuram: Home minister Thiruvanchoor Radhakrishnan has said that the state government had not taken any extraordinary measures to combat the secretariat siege and that it would do nothing to quell the agitation.
Nonetheless, he said those indulging in violence would not be spared. He called the LDF volunteers ‘kar sevaks’. “The ‘kar sevaks’ destroyed Babri Masjid and now the LDF agitators are planning to annex the secretariat. Both are the same,” he said.
He urged the LDF to withdraw the siege. “The secretariat does not belong to any particular front. It belongs to the people. A set of people is now trying to block the right of the people to enter the secretariat,” he said. Describing the battle in Shakespearean terms, he said: “To do or not to do is the question facing the LDF; should they allow the people to lose or should they back off in the best interests of the people.”
If the LDF is going ahead, he wanted it to spare at least one gate of the secretariat. “Let the common man walk through that gate. The LDF can carry on their strike in other areas,” he said. Such an agitation would not have taken place in front of Parliament or in the capital of other states. “In Delhi, agitators are allowed only up to the Boat Club maidan,” he said. “In this case, the agitators want to enter the secretariat,” he added.
Radhakrishnan played down the alleged police move to shut down the temporary kitchen of the agitators at Jagathy. “None goes to dismantle a structure with just an SI and three policemen. They just checked whether they had valid documents and once they were convinced, they left,” he said.
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