Coimbatore (Tamil Nadu) [India], January 19: RGK National Organiser and President of the Hindustan Janata Party Raghul Gandhi submitted a petition to President Droupadi Murmu and Union Home Minister Amit Shah on Sunday.
The petition requested a ban on flying party religious, linguistic and caste flags on Republic Day and Independence Day with the objective of fostering national unity and patriotism among the people, transcending divisions.
Speaking to ANI, Raghul Gandhi explained that on Independence Day and Republic Day, the national focus is frequently diverted by regional disputes involving language, religion, and caste that vary from state to state, rather than representing a unified national identity.
The HJP President asserted that the National Flag should remain the primary symbol of representation.
"This petition is regarding our national issue, because a lot of times the national flag always representing the two days only mainly. So the two days, Independence Day and Republic Day, most of the time, our state-wise, every state having some language and religion issue, so always a separate question was going," said Gandhi.
"Now recently, the Karnataka Sabarimala people coming to Tamil Nadu, we seen this one lot of the flag issue. So that unity was totally misguided from a political and religions wise. So mainly now we are, our petition is representing, main thing is our national flag is the main priority to represent," added Gandhi.
Discussing the process to enforce the petition, Gandhi said that in the short term, they are seeking to ban religious, linguistic, and caste flags on Republic Day itself. He asserted that on that day, the national flag must be the sole priority, stating that it should be the only flag flown across every part of India.
He further stated that they will be filing a petition in the Madras High Court regarding this matter.
"So now, the process is short-term only, we are focusing on this Republic Day itself. This is only the political party flags and caste flags; not want to fly on that day. So we want to ban that. So we represent the petition. On that day only national flag only priority all were want to fly it everywhere in India," said Gandhi.
"So, the short time period having, so we are representing, now the petition-wise, we represented our petitions. Now we are focusing by the legal way. May be on Monday or Tuesday, we are going to file in a High Court, Madras High Court, regarding this," added Gandhi.