LUCKNOW: The politics of colour with political overtones is far from over in Uttar Pradesh. A day after the damaged statue of BR Ambedkar was reinstalled in Dugraiyya town of Badaun district, a BSP leader with a bunch of his supporters painted the statue blue.
Initially, the statue had Dr Ambedkar wearing a saffron coat which drew protests from Dalits. However, it turned blue after the fresh dash of paint by BSP district president Hemendra Gautam and his accomplices on Tuesday.
The statue was vandalised on Saturday sending the district administration officials into a tizzy. Within no time a new statue was imported from Agra and the vandalised one was replaced. An FIR was also lodged against the suspect who is still on the run. But owing to the saffron colour, it left the Dalit community see red.
When contacted, Badaun sub-divisional magistrate Parasnath Maurya said, “The statute installed here was selected by local residents with the help of a BSP coordinator. They had claimed that other statues available at Agra were small in size and that they did not like those.”
A day after its installations, many BSP leaders linked the saffron coat as the colour of Lord Buddha and garlanded the statue. But then BSP district president himself led a bunch of his supporters and repainted it blue. He, later, paid tributes to the Dalit icon expressing satisfaction on the new colour of his coat.