Union Jal Shakti Minister Gajendra Shekhawat has demanded an inquiry by an independent Central agency into the self-immolation and subsequent death of monk Baba Vijay Das, who was among a group of seers that had been agitating for long to shut down illegal mining near Deeg in Bharatpur district of Rajasthan.
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The hills of Kankachal and Adi Badri near Deeg form part of the famous Braj Chaurasi pilgrimage circuit. Seers looking after the pilgrimage had been demanding the removal of stone quarries. They wanted the entire region declared as a forest area through a notification to stop any kind of mining activities.
Mr. Shekhawat said that the State government was speaking disingenuously, with Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot issuing a statement that he wanted an inquiry over the circumstances surrounding Baba Vijay Das's self-immolation and subsequent death.
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"I find the statement by Rajasthan Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot frankly ironic that in his reaction to the tragic event of the self- immolation of Baba Vijay Das, he pointed to his own media statement of July 18th saying that when he had promised to sort out the issue, a tragedy like the self-immolation taking place had taken him by surprise and that he would set an inquiry into it. I find Mr. Gehlot's statement surprising," he said.
"The Rajasthan government is talking of setting up an inquiry, to be carried out by its own officials into a set of circumstances created by itself, and a self-immolation wherein it is complicit by acts of omission and commission. There can nothing stranger than this," he said.
"The circumstances surrounding the self-immolation are very clear. On October 1, 2021, there was a meeting between all the seers and monks involved in the agitation and Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot, the latter had said very clearly that he would put a stop to the mining in the area and declare the area as forest area. After that, the Collector of Bharatpur had on October 12 prepared the requisite report for such a notification. The Rajasthan government sat on that report for the last nine months. After waiting in vain for the last nine months, Baba Vijay Das resorted to self-immolation. After all this, the Chief Minister is still searching for the reasons surrounding the tragedy? The aim of the Rajasthan government is to obfuscate its own culpability in the tragedy. For a seer or a monk to struggle to get his voice heard by the government of the day is tragic," he said.
"The inquiry should instead be on those who were benefiting from continued mining in that area, in the face of this agitation, towards whom the State government had shut its eyes. All officials, politicians and others for whose benefit mining was allowed to continue in teeth of such opposition should be exposed via such an inquiry, which will only be possible through a Central agency," he said.
Baba Vijay Das had set himself on fire on July 23, after which he was first rushed to Jaipur for treatment and later shifted to Delhi, where he succumbed to the over 80% burns that he had sustained.