Incidents of vandalism continued on Thursday with two more statues being damaged in Kerala and Tamil Nadu.
According to the reports, while a statue of Mahatma Gandhi was targeted in Kerala's Kannur district, a bust of Baba Ambedkar was damaged at Tiruvottiyur in Tamil Nadu's Chennai.
A photo tweeted by news agency ANI showed broken spectacles hanging from the face of Mahatma Gandhi's statue, located in Thaliparamba area of Kannur.
According to the police, stones and bottles were hurled, damaging the spectacle and garland on the statue situated in front of the Thaliparambha taluk office. The attack was noticed on Thursday morning.
Thursday's incident is the latest in the series of tit-for-tat attacks on statues of political figures in many parts of the country. Earlier, a statue of Lenin was damaged in Tripura followed by Periyar's statues in Tamil Nadu. In another incident, Sangh ideologue Syama Prasad Mookerjee's bust was also vandalised in Kolkata. On Wednesday another statue of Dr Ambedkar was also damaged by unidentified people in Uttar Pradesh's Meerut.
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"Such incidents will not stop and are a result of the weak Central government. The Centre needs to accept their failure or that they are guiding such mishappenings, Congress leader Renuka Chowdhury said on Thursday.
Taking a serious view of the desecration of statues in various parts of the country, the Home Ministry on Wednesday issued a second advisory, its second in the day, holding district magistrates and superintendents of police "personally responsible" for such incidents of vandalism.
The fresh advisory came a few hours after the ministry, in its first advisory, told all states and union territories that incidents of toppling and damaging of statues must be checked immediately and stern action should be taken to prevent such incidents.
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PM Modi has also expressed his strong disapproval of incidents of vandalism of statues and spoken to Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh on the matter.
The home minister has appealed to political parties to ensure that those found desecrating statues are dealt with strictly.
(With Agency Inputs)
