PATNA: The provocative statement of a Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) legislator against the members of a minority community, led to protest by the Congress MLAs on the first day of the budget session of the Bihar legislature on Friday.
Two MLAs of the grand old party - Shakeel Ahmad Khan and Rajesh Ram - boycotted the customary joint address of Governor Phagu Chauhan and staged a protest outside the House, citing two incidents of 'communal vitiation' as reasons.
The BJP MLA Hari Bhushan Thakur Bachaul demanded the withdrawal of voting rights of the minority community. The Bisfi MLA pleaded that the Muslims were given a separate country Pakistan at the time of partisan of India in 1947. “Those who chose to stay back in India should be stripped of their voting rights and treated as second class citizens,” the BJP legislator said.
Bachaul's remarks came a day after Hyderabad MP Asaduddin Owaisi led AIMIM legislator and state chief Akhtarul Iman said the people belonging to minority community (read Muslim) be given due representation in elected bodies on their proportionate population.
Irked over the BJP MLA's statement, the AIMIM legislator said that he would take up the matter with the Speaker of the assembly Vijay Kumar Sinha and demand for his disqualification from the House.
The BJP state chief Sanjay Jaiswal, however, tried to downplay the controversy. In a statement on Friday, he asked his party's legislator to respect the religious sentiments of all sections of the society. “Don't issue statements that hurt the religious sentiments of people,” he added.
Khan, who represents the Kadwa assembly constituency, said that a JD-U worker belonging to the minority community was kidnapped, tortured and beaten to death. The perpetrators of the crime also burnt his body and then dumped it on the bank of the river. Two days later, the police recovered the body.
The Congress MLA suspected the role of cow vigilantes in the killing of the man, a resident of Musarigharari in Samastipur district. The video, which went viral on social media, showed the offenders' audacity to disturbing questions such as whether he consumed beef.
Rajesh Ram expressed concern over rising incidents of atrocities on the members of scheduled caste and scheduled tribes in the state. “The government is keeping mum while members of SC/ST community,” he said.
Earlier, RJD MLA from Mahua Mukesh Kumar Raushan reached the assembly premises with a toy helicopter as a mark of protest against the state government's decision to deploy helicopters in operation against liquor smugglers in the state.