Jammu: Jammu, April 30: Controversy hit a new reshuffled Jammu and Kashmir government Monday when BJP leader Kavinder Gupta said after being sworn in as Deputy Chief Minister that the rape and murder of a young girl in Kathua was a ”minor issue” that should not have been hyped.
“The Kathua incident is a minor issue. It should not have been hyped this much,” Gupta said about the crime that triggered widespread outrage across the country and cost two of his party colleagues their ministerial jobs in the Mehbooba Mufti-led BJP-PDP coalition government.
Gupta, a known RSS loyalist, however, sought to correct the statement later, saying the matter was in the court and should be left to the Supreme Court to decide about it.
“It is not good to keep talking about it repeatedly. It is not good to keep playing it up again and again. What I said earlier was that there are many such incidents, nobody should provoke (people) about such incidents deliberately.”
This is not Gupta’s first brush with controversy. As the speaker of the legislative Assembly earlier, he had sparked row by blaming the Rohingya refugees living in Jammu for the attack on an army camp in Sunjwan in February.
Earlier, in a major mid-term Cabinet overhaul, Gupta was sworn in as the new Deputy Chief Minister replacing Nirmal Singh, who is set to become the Speaker of the Jammu and Kashmir Assembly.
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