NEW DELHI: A day after the PM Narendra Modi meeting with women sarpanchs (village heads) in Gujarat on the occasion of International Women’s Day, a lawmaker claimed in Lok Sabha that three women village heads (sarpanch) from Kerala were allegedly stopped from attending the event as they were wearing hijab (veil). However, the BJP members refuted the claim terming it wrong.
E T Mohammed Basheer, an Indian Union Muslim League (IUML) member, raised the issue during Zero Hour saying three women sarpanches from Kerala had gone to Gandhinagar to attend the Swachh Shakti 2017 – a Convention of Women Sarpanches.
“The three women were first stopped as they were wearing the hijab….they also got engaged in arguments with security personnel. Finally, they were allowed to attend the event but only on the condition that they have to remove their hijab,” he said.
Seeking an apology from the PM, Basheer said that the women protested against the move and were let in on the condition that they would sit in the last row.
However, minority affairs minister Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi denied any such incident. "This is wrong and baseless," Naqvi said. Narendra Singh Tomar, minister of Drinking Water, said the claim made by the MP has no relation with reality and people are being misguided.
The minister said a women identified as Shalini Rajput did try to meet the PM by attempting to break the security cordon. She was stopped by the security personnel.
In another development, the alleged death threat issued to Kerala CM Pinarayi Vijayan by an RSS member who was later sacked from the outfit was also raised in the Lok Sabha on Thursday. Members of the CPI (M) and the BJP indulged in heated exchanges during the Zero Hour as CPI(M) member P Karunakaran said an RSS functionary from Ujjain in Madhya Pradesh had announced a hefty reward for anyone who would come forward to kill the Kerala Chief Minister.
"Is this a government policy to attack chief ministers of other parties," Karunakaran asked, provoking noisy protests by BJP members. The CPI(M) leader was joined by other opposition members in his attack against the government and to vociferously counter the BJP members.
Parvesh Varma, BJP member from Delhi, alleged that RSS and BJP members were being attacked in Kerala and the Left was resorting to violence in this ideological fight.