New Delhi, Aug 22 (IANS): After members of the National Students Union of India (NSUI), the student wing of the Congress, put a shoe garland around Vinayak Damodar Savarkar's statue and tarred its face, the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), the student wing of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) here on Thursday slammed it for disrespecting the freedom fighter.

Former Delhi University Student Union (DUSU) head Shakti Singh said, "Their (NSUI) tradition has been to defame freedom fighters. The recent event where it blackened the statue and put a shoe garland on it shows that they respect no freedom fighter."

Echoing Singh, ABVP State Secretary Siddharth Yadav said the installation of statues might be debatable, but the NSUI's act was condemnable.

Savarkar's statue was installed outside the Arts Faculty's gate in North campus of the Delhi University on Tuesday by Singh on his last day in office, without the permission of the administration.

Singh said they had approached the administration several times for permission, but there was no response. "I know the process of installing the statue might be debatable, but we, at the ABVP, follow nationalism and Savarkar was one of the biggest freedom fighters," he said.