Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday asked youths of Uttar Pradesh to shun violence while alluding to the protests against the citizenship act, but avoided any mention of either the legislation or the National Register of Citizens, another controversial step that has sown doubts about his government’s intentions.

Modi said he wanted to tell the “youths from the land of Atal (Bihari Vajpayee)” that a lot has been spoken “about our rights” in the years since Independence. “But now we should talk about our responsibilities…,” he told a gathering on the former Prime Minister’s birth anniversary.

“Those who committed violence in the name of protest and damaged public property should sit peacefully at home and think whether it was the right path. They torched public property. Wasn’t it for their and their children’s use?”

Modi was addressing government officials and BJP leaders at a heavily fortified Lok Bhavan, the main secretariat of the state government, after unveiling a 25ft-high statue worth Rs 89 lakh of Vajpayee, who represented Lucknow in the Lok Sabha.

He also laid the foundation stone for a new medical college named after Vajpayee.

Modi’s address came a day after a senior police officer admitted that a young protester was killed in police firing last week, contradicting an earlier claim by the state’s police chief that no one died in police firing during protests against the Citizenship (Amendment) Act.

Vishwajeet Srivastava, superintendent of police, Bijnor (rural), said the police had fired in self-defence.

Uttar Pradesh has suffered the highest number of casualties in the protests that have broken out in several parts of the country.

Director-general of police O.P. Singh has said that 15 people have died in violence in the state but a count from the districts suggests that 20 protesters had lost their lives; of them 10 had bullet injuries.

The police had also baton-charged and tear-gassed protesters to disperse peaceful gatherings across the state between December 15 and December 22.

But Modi’s speech skipped any mention of the police brutality under the pretext of arresting rioters, effectively giving a clean chit to the BJP-led Yogi Adityanath government and the force.

Instead, he stressed on the “responsibility” of citizens to protect public property. “Those who died (during protests), those who sustained injuries, even the policemen sustained injuries… there are false rumours… and so I want to request you… good roads and transport are the rights of the citizens but it is also their responsibility to protect them,” the Prime Minister said, leaving his sentences unfinished.

Half-a-dozen state buses, over three dozen cars and 100 motorcycles were set on fire during the protests. But the protesters, who say the Modi government is targeting Muslims with the controversial act and the planned nationwide NRC, allege that at most places, including Lucknow, Kanpur and Meerut, some mysterious people had started the violence while they were taking out peaceful marches.

Sadaf Jafar, a social activist who was arrested by Lucknow police during a protest at Parivartan Chawk, had requested the police and the Rapid Action Force to arrest the violent elements who had infiltrated their peaceful demonstration.

Sadaf, who went live on a social media site with the help of her mobile phone, had shouted at the forces as they stood idle as some people set fire to parked vehicles.

Modi touched upon a host of other issues, including how his government had made getting birth certificates hassle-free through digitised services.

“Good governance means the government would reach the doors of the people, not people running to (government) offices,” he Modi.

But Muslims in Uttar Pradesh have already voiced fears that they would be deprived of citizenship rights as most of them don’t have birth certificates.

According to media reports, over 3,000 people in Meerut, 3,500 in Muzaffarnagar, 4,000 in Amroha, 3,400 in Bulandshahr, 4,700 in Baghpat and 2,600 in Saharanpur have over the past five days applied to municipal authorities for birth certificates.

Modi said his government had paved the way for those who had fled persecution from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan and thanked the 130 crore Indians for finding the solution to the problem.

He mentioned his government’s move to scrap Jammu and Kashmir’s special status under Article 370 and another “old problem”, the Ramjanmabhoomi dispute. “(Article) 370 was an old problem but it was solved easily. We demolished all the fears. Ram Janmabhoomi was also an old problem,” he said.

The Supreme Court had recently handed the 2.77-acre disputed plot in Ayodhya to Ram Lalla Virajman, the god himself, represented by a leader of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, the outfit blamed for demolishing the Babri Masjid in 1992.