Prateek Kanwal, a student of Master of Policy, class of 2018 at Harvard University, wrote a letter to the President of the university, Lawrence Bacow to revoke Sinha’s alumnus title. He put up a change.org petition which needs 15,000 signatures.
Image: BCCL
New Delhi: When BJP leader and Union Minister Jayant Sinha garlanded lynch convicts last Thursday, little did he know how it would backfire. His Harvard Alumnus status is at stake ever since Rahul Gandhi urged people on Twitter on Tuesday to sign an online petition to revoke his title.
On July 10, Prateek Kanwal, a student of Master of Policy, class of 2018 at Harvard University, wrote a letter to the President of the university, Lawrence Bacow to revoke Sinha’s alumnus status. He put up a change.org petition which needs 15,000 signatures. “As a responsible citizen of this country and as an Alumni of Harvard, I strongly condemn these actions and ask the Harvard University to withdraw his Alumni status,” he wrote.
“Mr. Sinha’s callous and insensitive actions, have generated tremendous anger in India and have been widely reported in newspapers, on television news channels, social media and other digital platforms. Unfortunately, most media reports allude to the fact that he is an alumnus of Harvard University. Which is our reason for writing to you – to draw your attention to the fact that Harvard’s name is being sullied in India, on account of its association with Mr. Sinha,” he wrote to Bacow in the letter.
On June 29 last year, meat trader Alimuddin Ansari was beaten to death by a mob in Bazaar Tand area under Ramgarh police station on suspicion that he was carrying beef in his car. Sinha had expressed happiness over the release of the convicts after being granted bail by the Jharkhand High Court recently, and garlanded and offered them sweets. He wrote many tweets justifying his actions and claiming that he was appreciating the due process of law.
Rahul Gandhi, Member of Parliament and President, Indian National Congress, had posted a tweet on Tuesday asking people to sign the petition. “If the sight of a highly educated MP & Central Minister, Jayant Sinha, garlanding & honouring criminals convicted of lynching an innocent man, fills you with disgust, click on the link & support this petition,” he tweeted.
Jayant Sinha’s father and veteran BJP leader Yashwant Sinha, too, launched a scathing Twitter attack on his son and said, “Earlier I was the Nalayak Baap of a Layak Beta. Now the roles are reversed. That is twitter. I do not approve of my son’s action. But I know even this will lead to further abuse. You can never win.”
The petition has received over 12500 signatures at the last count.
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