The Delhi Police came under severe criticism on Tuesday for conducting an unprecedented “raid” the previous evening at Kerala House to find out whether its restaurant served beef.
Kerala Chief Minister Oommen Chandy, whose Congress-led government runs the guest house, wrote a letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday, seeking his intervention to initiate “stringent action” against the police for entering the guest house without informing Kerala’s Resident Commissioner. Mr. Chandy also clarified in the letter that the restaurant’s menu was in “accordance with, and entirely within, the confines of the existing law”. The guesthouse is known for its popular buffalo meat dishes.
The dish was taken off the menu in the wake of the controversy, but on Tuesday, Kerala House said buffalo meat would return to its menu from Wednesday.
Since the consumption of buffalo meat is allowed across the country and cow slaughter banned in most States, politics over beef has gained a lot of traction after the BJP came to power.
The issue recently caused deaths and destruction and put the ruling BIP, which champions the religious cause of cow security, on the backfoot. In this background, with the Kerala House incident, several political leaders chipped in with criticism. While Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal called the action “an attack on the federal structure”, his counterpart in West Bengal, Mamata Banerjee, described it as “an unwise and unhealthy attempt to curb the fundamental rights of people”.
In a series of tweets, Mr. Kejriwal implicitly took a jibe at Prime Minister Narendra Modi, saying the Delhi Police were behaving like “BJP Sena”. “Will Delhi Police go [and] arrest a Chief Minister from a State Bhavan in Delhi if they suspect the CM to be eating something that BJP or Modiji don’t like,” wondered Mr. Kejriwal. On Monday evening, the Delhi Police acted on a complaint by a Hindu Sena activist that the guest house served “beef” in its restaurant. The police quickly dispatched a party to the guest house. According to Mr. Chandy, “the police disrupted the functioning of the staff canteen”, and questioned the staff whether cow meat was cooked in the kitchen.
Assam Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi also condemned the police action saying, “it is an attack on cooperative federalism”.
Downplaying the police action, senior BJP leader and Urban Development Minister M. Venkaiah Naidu said the police went to Kerala House to make “an inquiry”.
Mr.Naidu ruled out any connection between the police raid and Indian federalism.
“Where is the issue of federal structure? I am unable to understand. The information I have is some fellow wanted to create a scene. The police got information and they just went there to inquire. A person who is suspected of doing this has been doing this earlier also,” Mr. Naidu told the media here.
