Bihar BJP leader made to apologise

A burst of unruly protest by women on Monday virtually forced senior BJP leader and ex-minister Giriraj Singh to apologise for his remark that chief minister and JD(U) stalwart Nitish Kumar was behaving like a “dehati aurat (rural woman)” in his antipathy towards Narendra Modi.

Mr Singh, a diehard supporter of the BJP’s prime ministerial candidate and a former Cabinet minister in Bihar’s erstwhile BJP-JD(U) alliance government, had taunted Mr Kumar with an unusually sharp reaction to Mr Kumar’s equally controversial criticism of Mr Modi.

Soon after Mr Kumar obliquely referred to Mr Modi’s two Bihar visits as “outside garbage entering Bihar”, Mr Singh had said on Saturday that the chief minister was behaving like a “dehati aurat and quarreling with Modi out of jealousy”.

When a group of women carrying placards and brandishing bangles surrounded Mr Singh’s 15 Circular Road residence in Patna and chanted slogans against him, Mr Singh was not present at the ministerial bungalow that he still retains. The women insisted that Mr Singh had disrespected millions of women who live in India’s vast rural areas and must apologise or face more protests wherever he travels in Bihar.
“If women have felt hurt by my comments, I express regret. I never intended to hurt them,” said Mr Singh later to journalists. He, however, insisted that Mr Kumar’s statements regarding Mr Modi’s political activities continue to display the JD(U) leader’s “deep jealousy” at his Gujarat counterpart.
Mr Singh also accused Bihar’s food and civil supply minister Shyam Razak of the JD(U) of orchestrating the women’s protest and said the police did nothing to restrain the protesters outside his residence despite it being in a restricted zone with Section 144 clamped always.

Source: AA