Rajasthan’s BJP MLA ‘threatens voters’

In a second such controversy involving a BJP MLA in four days, two videos have surfaced purportedly showing Rajasthan’s Bhawani Singh Rajawat threatening voters with consequences if they did not vote for the party in local polls and allegedly rebuking a DSP on duty.

Separately, an audio clip of another State BJP leader Pramod Jain, who is municipality chairman of Nainwa sub-division of Bundi district, has surfaced, in which he is heard rebuking a police official for not relaxing the curfew during communal tension in Nainwa in September.

In the wake of the incidents involving his partymen in Rajasthan, BJP president Amit Shah on Sunday said the party’s Disciplinary Committee would look into the matter.

“Our party is a structured party. A Disciplinary Committee is there. If any incident occurs, the committee will take cognisance of the incident and decide,” Mr. Shah told reporters in Chennai.

A video of Ladpura (Kota) legislator Rajawat surfaced on Saturday on the social media, purportedly showing him threatening voters, ahead of the local body polls last month, with eviction from their illegally built dwellings in Kota if they did not vote for the BJP.

As a controversy erupted over his actions, Mr. Rajawat on Sunday said he was only asking the electorate to choose the BJP over the Congress as the latter had “done nothing for them”. He added: “During elections, all sorts of tactics are used. The people who have been misguided should be spoken to in the language that they understand and that is what I did. The matter is associated with the Municipal Corporation elections and there is a scheme in my constituency under which people are residing illegally in around 250-300 houses,” the MLA said.

“They had come to me. I showed pity on them and allowed them to stay in those houses. I promised to later shift them to some other place under the Punarvaas Scheme,” he said.

“When the Municipality elections were around, I told them that I am providing you a place to stay, so you vote for the BJP and not for the Congress as it has not done anything for you and only exploited the poor.” — PTI