Congress leader V.T. Balram, MLA, landed himself in another controversy with his Facebook post on education minister Abdu Rabb.
The issue in question was the education minister’s choice of a fresh name for his official residence. Abdu Rabb had reportedly refused to live in ‘Ganga,’ the official house allotted to him and Rabb had renamed the house as ‘Grace’ before moving in.
Balram on Facebook, posted Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru’s comment: “Ganga is the liquid history of India”. He went on to say that there was nothing dis ‘grace’ful about Ganga.
The comment evoked several responses and comments flooded in, both supporting and criticising Balram’s comment. Many flayed Balram for making such a remark against a Muslim League minister. “Why make a big issue on renaming a house.
You should promote his achievements as minister for education,” posted Sudheer Menon. Another person, Najeeb Hassan posted: “This is an unfortunate controversy; we should give Balram a pat for upholding the secularism of our country rather than criticising him.”
“I was commenting on the acceptability of renaming a house. There should be strong objections to a current name before making a change. Since there were no such objections, I thought changing the name from Ganga to Grace was inappropriate,” the social media savvy Balram said.
“The right to expression is something valuable but giving a religious connotation to my comment is something unacceptable and unfortunate,” the MLA told Deccan Chronicle.