Eat beef, why celebrate it? says Venkaiah Naidu

Mumbai (Maharashtra): Vice President M. Venkaiah Naidu on Monday raised the issues of 'beef ban' in the country, saying one can eat beef if he wants, but why to have festival for the same.

"You want to eat beef, then eat. Why Festival? Similarly, a 'Kiss Festival', if you wish to kiss why do you need a festival or anyone's permission for it," Naidu said, while addressing a gathering at Platinum Jubilee Celebrations of R.A. Poddar College of Commerce.

Further hitting out at Parliament attack convict Muhammad Afzal Guru, Naidu said "Then you have Afzal Guru. People are chanting his name. What is happening? He tried to explode our parliament".

On February 8, an alert advisory had been issued in Jammu and Kashmir in the wake of the death anniversaries of Parliament attack convict Muhammad Afzal Guru and Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) founder Maqbool Bhat.

The advisory comes after the JKLF announced to stage a protest against the hanging of Afzal Guru and Maqbool Bhat on February 9 and February 11.

Guru and Bhat were hanged and buried inside New Delhi's Tihar Jail on February 9, 2013 and February 11, 1984 respectively.

Naidu talking about beef festival could be directed to the reports of July 2017 when students of IIT-Madras held a beef festival inside the campus to protest against the cattle slaughter ban.

In the past too, Naidu had addressed the beef issue; while stressing on how food is an individual's choice he said that he is a strict non-vegetarian and nobody told him to what to eat or what not.