Newly-inducted Union minister KJ Alphons has said it was unfair to blame Prime Minister Narendra Modi or the Bharatiya Janata Party for incidents of violence or lynchings in India.
“In a country of 1.3 billion, there are some people who are nuts,” Alphons told News18 in an interview on Wednesday. “We can’t put the blame on the prime minister or the ruling party for a section of the society that is crazy and nuts.”
The minister of state (independent charge) for tourism said Modi had condemned incidents of cow vigilantism and had called for criminal action against those indulging in such violence. He said it was “extremely unfair” of the “so-called liberal media” to blame the prime minister for these incidents.
“Before the BJP came to power in 2014, there was widespread propaganda that mosques and churches will be destroyed, lives will be in danger,” he said. “Tell me how many churches, mosques have been burnt down?”
Days after he was inducted into the Cabinet, Alphons had said that people in Kerala will continue to consume beef. “The BJP does not mandate that beef cannot be eaten,” he had said.
The former IAS officer of the 1979 batch was also appointed the minister of state for electronics and information technology. He was dubbed the “demolition man” for razing around 15,000 illegal buildings during his tenure as the commissioner of the Delhi Development Authority.
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