Talking to reporters in Nagpur, Dipke sought to know what offence CJP leaders Saurav Das and Ashutosh Ranka committed by waving the tricolour at Jantar Mantar.
“What was their crime?” he asked.
Das and Ranka were detained early Tuesday after they allegedly breached barricades and entered the Jantar Mantar area without authorisation, raising slogans demanding Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Gyanesh Kumar’s resignation.
They were sent to five-day judicial custody and lodged in Delhi’s Tihar Jail on Wednesday for allegedly violating their peace bonds and trespassing into Jantar Mantar, which was denotified as a protest area, police sources said.
Reacting to the action against the CJP leaders, Dipke said, “I want to tell Narendra Modi that if you want to impose emergency in the country, then do it officially.””What is this, acting like cowards, imposing an unofficial emergency where you keep people in custody for five days just for waving the national flag at Jantar Mantar? That didn’t even happen during the Emergency (imposed by Indira Gandhi in 1975),” he said.
Dipke claimed that waving the tricolour has become the worst sin in this country, such that people are sent to judicial custody for five days for it.
“So I want to say to Narendra Modi, don’t be such a big coward; show some courage. If you want to impose emergency, then do it officially if you have guts,” he added.
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Dipke later visited Deekshabhoomi in Nagpur, where Dr B R Ambedkar embraced Buddhism along with thousands of his followers on October 14, 1956, and paid tributes the chief architect of India’s Constitution on the occasion of ‘Dhamma Chakra Pravartan Din’.
“Our country runs on the Constitution and the ideas of Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar. No matter what efforts Narendra Modi or anyone else makes to impose the RSS ideology on this country, that will not happen,” the CJP leader asserted.
This country will always follow the ideas of Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar, he added.
Asked about protests by the Opposition INDIA bloc to seek the CEC’s resignation, Dipke said the CJP is an independent pressure group and will always remain so.
“But that does not mean CJP is against the INDIA bloc. The movement of the INDIA bloc and CJP’s movement are for the same cause,” he noted.
The INDIA alliance was acting to protect the country’s democracy and the Constitution and had every right to do so, he added.
The raging protests over “vote chori” charge reached the Supreme Court’s doorstep on Monday as Opposition leaders undertook a “March for Democracy” on a heavily barricaded route and filed a joint petition against SIR and alleged poll irregularities.
Asked whether the march to the Supreme Court should have been avoided since it is a constitutional institution, Dipke alleged that despite its status, the apex court had “in some ways helped the Election Commission” in matters such as party splits and the freezing of election symbols.
He also questioned the court’s role during the alleged deletion of voters’ names from electoral rolls.
Dipke said the Supreme Court’s stance on the deletion of voters in West Bengal electoral rolls was that it was “not a big deal” and that those who could not vote in the current election could do so in the next one.
“Will the Supreme Court tell Narendra Modi the same thing, don’t contest this election, contest next time? If you cannot tell Narendra Modi that, then why do you tell voters that it’s okay not to vote this time, vote next time,” he remarked.
On former Solicitor General of India Harish Salve’s claims that the recent protests in India were being funded from abroad, Dipke said he requests the senior lawyer to provide that evidence to Union Home Minister Amit Shah.
“Somehow, Amit Shah has not been able to prove yet that we have been receiving foreign funding. So, if Harish has the evidence, he should hand it over to Amit Shah, because he is clearly struggling to find any,” he said.
“Why are these people just making allegations? You have all the resources, you have all the investigative agencies, come up with the evidence, do the investigation and take some action…,” he said.
Asked about Maharashtra Deputy Chief Minister Eknath Shinde’s comments that the Opposition is speaking Pakistan’s language, Dipke said the Shiv Sena leader should do some proper work and pay attention to issues concerning the state.
“Why bring Pakistan, China, America into everything when there is a drought situation across Maharashtra? Eknath Shinde should pay some attention to that. He should pay attention to the plight of farmers,” the CJP leader said.
