The cold wave sweeping Bihar for a week brought khaki and khadi into an unseemly collision course when a ruling BJP legislator was found publicly humiliating a poor police constable on duty for allegedly burning a party banner to get warmth.
Lakhiserai MLA Vijay Kumar Sinha’s act was decried by the Opposition parties, who dubbed the incident as another sign of the “jungle raj” in Bihar despite chief minister Nitish Kumar’s claims of rule of law. But the ruling parties BJP and JD(U) saw little wrong in his action and rather blamed the constable.
Home guard constable Yogendra Yadav was accosted by a visibly angry Sinha on a road in the southern town and forced to hold his earns and seek apology for his conduct on Monday. The MLA’s aides, present beside him, had told him that Yadav had brought down a BJP banner hung by the roadside and burnt it to get heat in the biting cold.
“Did not you see whose banner it was? Do not you have brains?” asked Mr Sinha to Mr Yadav, who stood with folding hands and shivered in fear. “Mistake ho gaya hai, sirji,” (I committed a mistake, sir) he said. Then Mr Sinha asked him to hold his ears as a mark of punishment and left with his aides. The incident was captured on camera and shown on a news channel.
Mr Sinha later told journalists: “I know him (the constable). This habit dates back to the jungle raj, and will go away slowly.” With the constable being from the Yadav community that once displayed wholesale support for the Lalu Prasad Yadav-led RJD, the BJP leader’s remarks and act were seen by many as motivated by elements of caste-based politics.
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Digvijay flags off son foray into politics
Guna (MP), Dec. 21: Congress general secretary Digvijay Singh on Wednesday launched his son Jaiwardhan Singh in the politics by flagging off his six-day padyatra.
The yatra began at village Koluwa, about 80 km from here, in the presence of thousands of locals.
It would take the Singh junior through Raghogarh constituency of Guna district.
Speaking on this occasion, Digvijay said he had asked his son to stop in the villages en route and interact with the villagers.
“I have told my son that bookish knowledge may be good but one has to go much beyond that,” the Congress general secretary said.
Digvijay himself had started his political career by winning from Raghogarh in the Assembly election post-Emergency in 1977.
Although speculation is rife that Jaiwardhan may contest the 2013 Assembly election from Raghogarh, the younger Singh did not confirm it. “The next election is two years away and I am going on padayatra only to know the feelings and desires of the poor people living in villages,” Jaiwardhan said.
Digvijay criticised the BJP government in Madhya Pradesh for shortage of fertilisers.
— PTI