Press Trust of India
Lucknow, July 21: Hundreds of BSP workers Thursday took to the streets here demanding the immediate arrest of Dayashankar Singh for his derogatory remarks against party supremo Mayawati even as police carried out raids in Lucknow and Ballia to trace the now expelled BJP leader and detained his brother. Leading the protest at the busy Hazratganj crossing, leader of opposition in the Legislative Council, Naseemuddin Siddiqui said the administration is being given 36 hours to arrest Singh.
The party workers held the protest for about five hours beginning 8 am. Siddiqui ended the protest around noon after giving the ultimatum to the District Magistrate that Singh be arrested quickly. Police said raids have been conducted in Lucknow and Ballia to arrest Singh. In Ballia, Singh’s brother Dharmendra was taken into custody from his house, SP, Manoj Jha said. Since early morning party workers from different districts converged at the Ambedkar statue at the Hazratganj crossing on the call of the party to stage dharna against Singh.
In the dharna, which threw traffic out of gear for hours, a BSP worker was slightly injured while trying to set an effigy ablaze. Singh had sparked an outrage by his derogatory comments against the BSP supremo. He had stated that “Mayawati is breaking the dream of Kanshi Ram into pieces. Mayawati is selling tickets like a….” Reacting to the protests, senior BJP leader and Union Minister Venkaiah Naidu said the issue is over and the BJP has already taken action against him.
“This issue is over. We took action against him. Now what else should we do, tell? What he said was completely objectionable. The leader of the House too condemned the statement at the earliest. He was removed from his post, and later on he was suspended also. Let them protest, they keep on protesting; be it Congress or others. The thing is that BJP is moving ahead, and they can’t digest that,” he said. The state’s Samajwadi Party government has made it clear that action as per law will be taken against Singh on the basis of the FIR.
Inset: Rahul meets Dalit family in Una
Una (Saurashtra): Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi Thursday visited the home of a Dalit man whose four sons were brutally flogged July 11 for skinning a dead cow and announced assistance of Rs 5 lakh for the family. Gandhi, who flew into Gujarat in the morning, drove straight to the house of Babubhai Sarvaiya in Samadhiyala village of Una and spent 40 minutes with the family. Gandhi was accompanied by the party’s Gujarat affairs in-charge Gurudas Kamat, state Congress president Bharatsinh Solanki and other party leaders here as well as Congress leader and Dalit leader Kumari Selja.
