Kanpur (Uttar Pradesh) [India], January 18 : Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Mohan Yadav on Sunday criticised Congress MLA Phool Singh Baraiya for his alleged remarks on the reasons behind rape cases, calling them "very wrong."
CM Yadav urged Congress leader Rahul Gandhi to issue an apology and take disciplinary action by removing the MLA from the party.
"Congress MLA has given a very wrong statement. Rahul Gandhi should apologise, and he should remove his MLA from the party," he said.
Union Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan also criticised Baraiya's remarks, saying such inappropriate statements should never be made. He stressed that daughters should not be divided along caste or community lines and described them as goddesses.
"Daughters are like goddesses to me. We cannot divide daughters on the basis of caste or community. In our tradition, it is believed that daughters are the embodiment of Maa Durga, Lakshmi and Saraswati. So, whether it is a leader or any other person, daughters belong to every caste and community--how much will we divide society, will we divide daughters too? Such inappropriate remarks should never be made," Chouhan told reporters on Saturday.
Meanwhile, Congress MLA Phool Singh Baraiya issued a clarification, saying the statement attributed to him was not his own. In a video posted on Facebook, he said he had quoted a statement written by a former Head of the Philosophy Department in Bihar, only as a reference. Baraiya added that he personally does not agree with or support the statement.
"Greetings. The statement for which allegations are being made against me is not my own. That statement was written by Hari Mohan Jha, who was the Head of the Philosophy Department in Bihar, and I quoted it in a particular context. I do not personally agree with this statement, nor do I support it, but I quoted it only as a reference," Phool Singh Baraiya said in a self-made video on Facebook.