The Shiv Sena on Wednesday hit out at Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M. K. Stalin for felicitating A. G. Perarivalan, a convict in the Rajiv Gandhi assassination who was released recently. Its MP Sanjay Raut rebuked Mr. Stalin for ‘dignifying’ the late Prime Minister’s assassin and remarked that it set “a dangerous ideal.”
The Sena, an ally of the Congress in Maharashtra’s tripartite Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) government, lambasted Mr. Stalin who had had warmly greeted Mr. Perarivalan after his release, asking what the Chief Minister was trying to prove by his action.
“Everyone knows Tamil Nadu’s politics and its turns. [Congressman] Rajiv Gandhi was the nation’s leader who sacrificed himself. He was assassinated in Tamil Nadu. If Chief Minister [Stalin] felicitates his assassins, then I do not think it is morally right nor is it part of not our culture,” Mr. Raut said.
While it was all right that Mr. Periravalan had been released after 31 years, it was highly improper for Mr. Stalin to hug and felicitate him, he stated.
“Earlier, pro-Khalistani leaders from political parties [in the Punjab] had felicitated Khalistani terrorists. Attempts had been made to dignify Indira Gandhi’s assassins, but the people’s resentment foiled such acts. Likewise, some political parties and leaders had attempted to elevate terrorists in Jammu and Kashmir to the status of freedom fighters. This, too, was met with public ire,” Mr. Raut observed.
Whatever be one’s politics, it did not behove a State’s Chief Minister to show respect to a Prime Minister’s assassin in this manner, he added.
Removal of pictures
Incidentally, in September last, Mr. Raut, while targeting the BJP for excluding the picture of India’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru from a poster released by the Indian Council of Historical Research (ICHR), had praised Mr. Stalin’s “political maturity“ in not removing his political rivals’ pictures.
The Sena leader, who has spoken of Mr. Stalin being part of a grand ‘anti-BJP coalition’ in the past, had lauded the Chief Minister for his decision of not removing the pictures of his political rivals and former Chief Ministers - Jayalalithaa and E. K. Palaniswami - from school bags that were being distributed free to children in the State.
