Vandalism as a method of protest won't be tolerated; same standards for all: Arun Jaitley

New Delhi: Sending out a strong message, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley has strongly criticised the acts of vandalism as a method of protest and said that contentious issues should be debated in a civilized manner.

“The past few days have seen an extremely disturbing trend where some people have been resorting to vandalism as an instrument of registering their protest...it is quote possible that in a large country like India people have divergent views but we have a tradition on expressing our views with civility,” Jiatley said.

“Some of these issues extremely serious, some can reflect on inter-community relations, others can reflect on sensitive areas such as Jammu and Kashmir. I have no difficulty if people convey contrarian views as I see essence of democracy in debate. Therefore, there has to be a proper civilized mode of discussing and debating these issues,” he said.

“What is disturbing is when these acts of vandalism are increasingly publicized, many are encouraged to use similar methods...Important that people indulging in this are strongly criticized, all right thinking sections will have to distance themselves from such methodologies,” Jiatley said, adding, “We have to have same standards for all. We all have to convey differences in restrained manner.”

The Finance Minister said people indulging in this (Vandalism) should be strongly criticised.

On the role of some BJP leader, he said, “I don't think anybody in the BJP has resorted to these methods(vandalism). Few made statements on sensitive issues. Party president has very strongly taken it up with them, PM conveyed his views, all of them have been spoken to.”

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