The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has lodged a complaint with the Election Commission (EC) over a purported comment made by the candidate of the Trinamool Congress at Arambagh in West Bengal, Sujata Mondal Khan, allegedly calling people of the Scheduled Castes as “beggars by nature”.
The BJP alleged that the purported comment by Sujata Mondal Khan reflected a “certain mindset” in the Trinamool Congress and a pattern set by the party’s supremo and West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, who had “consistently attempted to polarise” the electorate during the assembly polls in the state “on the basis of religion or caste” and had even gone gone to the “extreme fringes” by “raising the bogey of outsiders”.
“Even though Mamata Banerjee helped the poor Scheduled Castes. Yet their scarcity will never mitigate. There is a saying that some are beggars by nature while others are beggars by circumstance. The Scheduled Castes here are beggars by nature,” the BJP quoted the Trinamool Congress candidate saying.
The party alleged that Sujata had not only violated the Model Code of Conduct, but also committed an offence under the Section 125 of the Representation of People’s Act 1951 and the Section 3 of the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act 1989.
It urged the EC to take action against Sujata as well as the “leadership” of the Trinamool Congress.
Sujata is incidentally the wife of the BJP MP from Bishnupur, Saumitra Khan.