In a statement that puts her own party’s government in Madhya Pradesh on the spot, Bharatiya Janata Party MP Pragya Thakur recently said that poor people in villages she had adopted were forced to “sell their daughters and give money to the police”.
At an event organised by the Udyog Vyapar Mandal on September 17, Ms. Thakur said she had been supporting the education of poor girls of three villages she had adopted but the people there sold home-brewed liquor for sustenance. “In such a situation, when the police takes them away, they sell daughters to pay the police and rescue those arrested,” she said. The Bhopal MP also said people had nothing to eat in these places.
The statement comes at a time when an alleged scam in the nutrition scheme for children, adolescent girls and women, has rocked the State. The Congress has been aggressive on the issue both inside the Assembly and outside, while Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan had maintained that the audit report findings were not complete.
