<\/p>\n
Chandigarh, May 7 (TNS): Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh on Monday accused the Indian ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) of trying to communalise the atmosphere in the country.<\/p>\n
Referring to the \u2018namaz<\/em>\u2019 controversy in neighbouring Haryana, the Congress leader said that India is governed by the Constitution and no one has the right to prevent anyone from holding prayers anywhere they want.<\/p>\n The Punjab CM took strong exception to Haryana CM Manohar Lal Khattar\u2019s reported remark that namaz should be offered only in mosques.<\/p>\n Responding to a question during a press conference, the Punjab CM said that according to him the BJP seemed to be out to polarise the society on religious lines to garner votes.<\/p>\n Earlier today, the Haryana CM had clarified that he did not talk about stopping anyone from offering\u00a0namaz<\/em>\u00a0in open areas<\/p>\n \u201cI haven\u2019t spoken about stopping anyone. Maintaining law and order is the duty of the police and the administration,\u201d Khattar said in Chandigarh.<\/p>\n In his reaction to reports that of\u00a0namaz<\/em>\u00a0being disrupted allegedly by right-wing groups in Gurugram on 4 May, the Haryana CM had reportedly said, \u201cNamaz<\/em>\u00a0should be read in mosques or\u00a0idgahs<\/em>\u00a0rather than in public spaces.\u201d<\/p>\n The CM said his government is keeping a close watch on the situation but if there is shortage of places for offering\u00a0namaz<\/em>, it should be done in personal spaces such as inside homes.<\/p>\n The alleged disruptions of\u00a0namaz<\/em>\u00a0have become a major controversy for the state government. As per a Hindustan Times news report, the outfits claimed that they will continue to \u2018disrupt\u2019\u00a0namaz<\/em>\u00a0congregations in the open if the authorities do not take action against the \u2018unauthorised\u2019 prayer meets.<\/p>\n As per reports, the fringe groups have been allegedly visiting many locations across Gurugram for the last two weeks where\u00a0namaz<\/em>\u00a0is offered every Friday and preventing them from doing so. There were reports of disruptions at Wazirabad, Atul Kataria Chowk, Cyber Park, Bakhtawar Chowk and at South City.<\/p>\n They allege a land grab attempt in a bid to merge it with the mosques.<\/p>\n Even Haryana health minister Anil Vij shared a similar concern.<\/p>\n \u201cOccasionally if someone needs to read the\u00a0namaz<\/em>, he has the religious freedom to do so but one can\u2019t read\u00a0namaz<\/em>\u00a0anywhere in the open, with the intention of grabbing land. The government can\u2019t allow that,\u201d Vij said.<\/p>\n Courtesy: The Statesman\u00a0<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Chandigarh, May 7 (TNS): Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh on Monday accused the Indian ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) of trying to communalise the atmosphere in the country. Referring to the \u2018namaz\u2019 controversy in neighbouring Haryana, the Congress leader said that India is governed by the Constitution and no one has the right to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":64063,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-64062","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64062","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=64062"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64062\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":64064,"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64062\/revisions\/64064"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/64063"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=64062"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=64062"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=64062"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}