India’s Rajnath expects cricket-like performance from PM Khan on political turf

• Indian home minister says Khalistan movement will not be allowed to be revived
• ‘Only UK-based Sikhs took part in a recent protest in support of independent Punjab’

India’s Minister for Home Affairs Rajnath Singh wished success to Prime Minister Imran Khan, expressing hope that he would perform well on the political turf as he had been doing on the cricket field.

“There is a new captain in Pakistan, he had been playing on the cricket field till now. Now, he has to play on the political field. Let’s see how successful he is, we pray for his strength to succeed,” he said while talking to journalists after an event here in Lucknow, capital of India’s Uttar Pradesh state.

On the Khalistan agitation, the Indian minister said that it would not be allowed to be revived. Despite over 10 lakh Sikhs living in the United Kingdom, he said that only 1,500 to 2,000 took part in the recent protest and not a single Sikh from India took part.

He was referring to a recent protest in support of a referendum for an independent Punjab. To another question, he blamed that the hand of Pakistan’s intelligence agency has also come out in the open in this movement for separation.

To a question, the Indian minister termed the Kashmir issue a chronic problem. “This (Kashmir issue) will take time to be resolved. But it will be realised,” he said. On Saturday, life returned to normal in the Indian-held Kashmir after two-day of the strike, called by the Hurriyat leadership against the legal challenge to the Article 35-A of the Indian Constitution.

On mob lynching, Rajnath said that it was unfortunate and should not happen. “But the biggest mob lynching took place in 1984,” he said in an apparent reference to the anti-Sikh riots. He said that the government has taken the lynching incidents very seriously and a committee has been set up under the home affairs secretary.

GOVT TO CHECK FAKE NEWS, PORNOGRAPHY: He said that the committee has submitted a report only a day before on Friday on the measures required to check it. “The law will also be amended if required,” he said. To a question on checks being imposed on social media, he said that fake news, pornography and other things which are harmful for the society would have to be checked and this was the responsibility of the government.