Naam Tami­lar Katchi seeks im­me­di­ate re­lease of Tamil or­a­tor and ac­tivist Nel­lai Kan­nan who has been ar­rested by the Tamil Nadu gov­ern­ment for his strong op­po­si­tion to the poli­cies of BJP in Tamil Nadu.

Express­ing shock at the de­ten­tion of ac­tivist Nel­lai Kan­nan’s by the gov­ern­ment of Tamil Nadu, Naam Tami­lar Katchi leader See­man chas­tised the state ma­chin­ery by say­ing that if words were to be rea­sons for ar­rest then the en­tire BJP lead­er­ship should be be­hind bars.

“The ar­rest of Nel­lai Kan­nan’s is an in­sult to Tamil Lan­guage ​​and Tamil peo­ple. It is a fool­ish act and it seems the state is try­ing to teach us a les­son,” said See­man, while speak­ing to the me­dia in Chen­nai to­day.

“I am wor­ried for my fa­ther Kan­nan,” added See­man.

Nel­lai Kan­nan has been ar­rested for speak­ing against the poli­cies of the Bhar­tiya Janata Party gov­ern­ment, es­pe­cially con­demn­ing the CAA and NRC. The BJP had held a dharna seek­ing his ar­rest.

Nel­lai Kan­nan has been de­tained un­der pro­vi­sions of spread­ing ha­tred be­cause of his re­marks against Prime Min­is­ter Modi and Home Min­is­ter Amit Shah.

See­man said the gov­ern­ment of Tamil Nadu was fol­low­ing dou­ble stan­dards. On the one hand it was turn­ing a blind eye to the un­con­sti­tu­tional and big­otry re­marks of the Bharatiya Janta Party lead­er­ship while on the other those who tweet con­dem­na­tion were ar­rested.

“How can the gov­ern­ment for­give the ut­ter­ance of BJP’s Tamil Nadu Na­tional Sec­re­tary H. Raja, who threat­ened that bombs will be thrown on stu­dents and who also abused the High Court? Can we for­get that BJP’s S V Sekhar mocked the me­dia and me­dia per­sons?

RSS ide­o­logue Gu­ru­murthy crit­i­cized the Chief Min­is­ter and Deputy Chief Min­is­ter as ‘im­po­tent’. Mr Venkatakr­ish­nan of the BJP cast casteist sar­cas­tic re­marks and Dik­shi­tar Dar­shan at­tacked a devo­tee at Chi­dambaram Natara­jar Tem­ple.  “Who will ar­rest these hate­mon­gers,” read the NTK me­dia state­ment.

NTK chief co­or­di­na­tor See­man urged the Tamil Nadu gov­ern­ment to can­cel all cases filed against Nel­lai Kan­nan and re­lease him im­me­di­ately. “His ar­rest is an in­sult to the Tamil peo­ple, as Nee­lai Kan­nan is a great bene­fac­tor of the Tamil lan­guage and cul­ture.