Lashing out at Prime Minister Narendra Modi for mentioning Congress-ruled Chhattisgarh and Rajasthan in his statement on sexual violence in Manipur, Chhattisgarh Chief Minister Bhupesh Baghel on Thursday (July 20) said the comparison was made with elections in mind.
Chhattisgarh and Rajasthan are among the five States where Assembly polls are due later this year.
Questioning the Prime Minister’s silence on Manipur till now and clubbing Chhattisgarh with the strife-torn State on the issue of law and order, the Chief Minister also questioned why Mr. Modi had not raised the issue during his recent visit to Chhattisgarh if that was indeed a cause of concern.
“Recently, the Prime Minister was on an electoral visit to Chhattisgarh, he levelled many allegations with an eye on the polls but in his speech he never mentioned law and order. [Home Minister] Amit Shah ji has visited several times. He too never spoke on the law and order issue. Suddenly today, because there are elections in Chhattisgarh and Rajasthan, he had compared these two with Manipur whereas there is no such situation in Chhattisgarh,” said Mr. Baghel.
While describing the Manipur incident as one that shook the soul of humanity, he also questioned the Prime Minister’s purported silence on violent incidents in BJP-ruled States.
Incidents in U.P., M.P.
“In Uttar Pradesh, people are being killed in courts. In Madhya Pradesh, tribals and people belonging to Scheduled Castes are being misbehaved with, he does not utter a single word on it. The Prime Minister does not get any free time from elections and foreign trips. Such fabricated allegations from someone occupying the post of Prime Minster linking Chhattisgarh to Manipur… there is no connection with the two States,” he said.
Mr. Baghel added that the Manipur issue, which the whole country and the world were concerned about, had been raging from even before the Karnataka polls, but the Prime Minister was busy campaigning.
While the Prime Minister did not mention any specific incident in the context of the two States, the Chhattisgarh government drew flak for a stabbing incident in capital Raipur in which the accused dragged the victim, a minor girl, pulling her hair earlier this year. In another incident, reported last June, a couple was stripped and paraded in Kondagaon district over an extra-marital affair.
