Lucknow: Uttar Pradesh Basic Education Minister Anupma Jaiswal today courted a controversy saying that the ministers visit Dalit homes to ensure that they get benefits of government schemes, despite ‘mosquitoes biting them all night’.
Jaiswal is the third BJP minister who has made a comment about Dalits in a week, sparking a row. “Schemes are being made for the benefit all sections and to ensure proper implementation ministers are paying several visits, even if mosquitoes bite them all night,” Anupma Jaiswal said after she was asked about the controversy on Minister Suresh Rana’s visit to a Dalit household.
Earlier this week, Suresh Rana, a minister in the UP government has triggered a controversy after he reportedly brought with him his own food and water at a dinner hosted at a Dalit household here.
Rana, however, had rejected the allegation saying, “The food was prepared in the village, by the villagers themselves.” On Thursday, Uma Bharti had skipped a meal with Dalits during an event organised near Chhattarpur in Madhya Pradesh, saying she was not Lord Rama who would purify people by having food with them.
Later, the BJP leader apologised, saying she was not aware that she was supposed to have food with them. “I want to share a secret with you. I don’t take part in ‘samrasta bhoj’ (community meals) because I do not consider myself Lord Rama, who went to Shabri’s home and the Dalits became purified,” she said, referring to the mythological episode from Ramayana.
Since last few months, the RSS and the BJP have been promoting ‘samrasta bhoj’ to spread across the message of social harmony and to eradicate casteism.
“I am not Lord Rama that if I sit with them, they will be purified… Instead if they come to our home and sit in our kitchen, we will be sanctified,” Bharti said.