ENS

Bangalore, Feb 26: Former prime minister Deve Gowda’s purported statement that youths take to terrorism due to poverty and unemployment has come in for sharp criticism.

Former minister and BJP leader Ramchandra Gowda, in an open letter to Deve Gowda, wondered how he would define poverty and unemployment, when the youth arrested for suspected involvement in terrorism was a software engineer earning a hefty salary.

Asking why Deve Gowda took up the cause of the suspected terrorists, he said it was evident that for pseudo secularists, secularism was a euphemism to indulge in ‘minority appeasement, majoritybashing and vote bank politics.’

He said that pseudo secularists were personifications of hypocrisy. He urged Deve Gowda to look at terrorism from the national angle and not from the vote bank angle.

He felt that Gowda’s notso- innocent statement had demoralised the already understaffed, resourcecrunched, physically fatigued, yet professionally competent police force.

When there is every reason to believe that the police had acted in a most responsible and just manner, Deve Gowda should refrain from making such statements, Ramachandra Gowda felt.

He urged the former prime minister to give a free hand to the police in handling terrorist activities in the state.