U-turn: Congress revokes invites to Kanhaiya Kumar, Shehla Rashid for Bapu event

NEW DELHI: In an about-face that is raising many questions, Congress invited JNU student leaders Kanhaiya Kumar and Shehla Rashid - in the thick of the controversy over a 2016 event at the university to commemorate Parliament attack convict Afzal Guru - to a seminar on Mahatma Gandhi's death anniversary, only to rescind the invitation at the last moment.
On Monday, the "AICC minority department" held a panel discussion on "remembering Mahatma Gandhi on his 72nd martyrdom year".The panelists listed in the initial invite included Kumar and Rashid besides academics Apoorvanand, Manoj Jha of RJD and Ashok Vajpayi. However, in the reworked invite, the names of Kanhaiya Kumar and Shehla Rashid were missing and added to the panel were senior lawyer K T S Tulsi and AICC spokespersons Manish Tewari and Priyanka Chaturvedi.
The Congress rethink on withdrawing a Gandhi seminar invite to JNU student leaders Kanhaiya Kumar and Shehla Rashid has raised eyebrows. The initial invite itself was a surprise given Congress’s silence on the Delhi Police recently chargesheeting Kumar and some others for sedition. The decision to ignore the development was in sharp contrast to Congress chief Rahul Gandhi’s decision to join students protesting in favour of Kumar and others at JNU in 2016 when the controversy broke out.
In this context, the withdrawal of invite seemed to be yet another belated course correction. While some speculated that it was the fear of backlash owing to the controversy over the alleged anti-national sloganeering in JNU, others said Kumar was facing a chargesheet and this led to Congress retrace its steps.
In its chargesheet, Delhi police has presented video evidence of inflammatory slogans calling for the vivisection of India and also listed electronic evidence to argue that the meeting to observe the “martyrdom” of Afzal Guru was a planned affair and that Kumar led the slogan-shouting crowd. The court has not taken cognisance of the police chargesheet as yet. At the last hearing, the court pulled up the police for not seeking the sanction of the Delhi government’s legal department.