Congress MP Jyotiraditya Scindia on Tuesday offered to resign from Parliament if the Bharatiya Janata Party was able to prove that the anti-Dalit allegations against him. The MP from Madhya Pradesh’s Guna moved a privilege motion against state unit BJP chief Nandkumar Singh Chouhan, and BJP MPs Virender Kumar and Manohar Utwal, for making what he called defamatory remarks against him.
On Monday, the BJP lawmakers had claimed that last week, during an inauguration of a trauma centre in Ashoknagar in Madhya Pradesh, Scindia had indulged in “anti-Dalit activities”. Their comments against the lawmaker came after a local Congress leader Amit Tawre had said that the facility will be purified before Scindia arrives as a Dalit BJP leader had visited it the previous day. Tawre was expelled from the party for six years on Monday.
In his privilege motion to Lok Sabha Speaker Sumitra Mahajan, Scindia rejected the allegations as “baseless and false”, and said he had nothing to do with Tawre’s statements. “The BJP’s rhetoric is a heinous attempt to malign my reputation and dignity in the House as well as with millions of people who watch Lok Sabha on television,” he wrote.
“Reputations take years to build but can be destroyed in seconds,” Scindia said in the Lok Sabha on Tuesday. “They are trying to destroy my reputation built over 15 years with hard work for every community.”
Scindia said if the BJP lawmakers were unable to prove the allegations against him, then they must resign from Parliament. Scindia had also served a legal notice to Nandkumar Singh Chouhan on Monday in connection with the same matter.
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