Mangaluru, August 20: Former union minister Manish Tiwari on Wednesday August 19th visited Mangaluru to attend a workshop at Mangalore University scheduled on Thursday August 20th in commemoration of the 125th birth anniversary of Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru.
Manish Tiwari addressed a press meet at the district Congress office here, and said, a lot of tension prevails along the North and North-west borders of our country. There was continuous shelling from the Pakistan side, even on August 15th. In Jammu and Kashmir there been continuous shelling at the border. A joint statement was signed between PMOs of Pakistan and India in Russia, but it was totally broken by Pakistan even before the ink on statement dried. The talks between National Security Advisors of India and Pakistan which is scheduled for August 23rd should be called off, he said.
The attack at Gurdaspur in Punjab- the first in 15 years, was followed by the arrest of a Pakistani militant in Udhampur. Adding insult to this is the invitation that the Pakistan High Commissioner has now invited the separatist elements in Jammu and Kashmir, such as the All Party Hurriyat Conference and such others who have known to have connections with terrorists to come and attend a reception in honour of Pakistan’s National Security Advisor Sartaz Aziz in Delhi, he said.
Last year in August when the Pakistan High Commissioner had extended a similar invitation to the Hurriyat, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had cancelled the foreign secretary level talks with Pakistan. We would like to ask PM Modi – now Pakistan has done it again to humiliate India, so why does India want to go ahead with the NSA talks? What is that India expects out of these talks? It would be appropriate to immediately cancel the NSA level talks. There is no point in holding talks with Pakistan when innocent civilians are being killed by terrorists, said Manish Tiwari.
Tiwari condemned the union government over the midnight operation in which five students of Film and Television Institute of India (FTII) in Pune were arrested. He said these students are protesting against the appointment of a person (Gajendra Chauhan) of low credentials as chairman of FTII. Rather than listening to the grievances of students and appointing some suitable candidate for the post, the government has resorted to take actions on innocent youths. The way the students were manhandled is against the democracy. It is very important to protect the ideals of democracy, said Manish Tiwari.
