A day after Kharge’s rally, Hindu organisations conducted a purification havan at Haldwani’s Ramlila Maidan on August 9
Bengaluru’s Vidhana Soudha police have registered an FIR in connection with the “purification ritual” held in Haldwani, Uttarakhand, after Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge addressed a public meeting there last month.
The FIR was registered at Vidhana Soudha police station on September 4 following a complaint by TR Ramappa, former vice-president of the Congress’s Scheduled Tribe Department.
Congress workers stage a protest in Haldwani, demanding the withdrawal of the FIR filed against Rahul Gandhi and action in the ‘Ramlila Maidan purification’ case
What is the whole matter?
On August 8, Mallikarjun Kharge addressed a public meeting at the Ramlila Maidan in Haldwani. The Congress alleges that, afterward, on August 11, some people performed a havan-yajna at the grounds and allegedly purified the stage. The Congress protested this, linking it to caste discrimination and a mindset of untouchability.
Subsequently, on August 29, Rahul Gandhi held a press conference in Delhi on the issue. Describing the alleged purification as a case of untouchability, he demanded that Prime Minister Narendra Modi have an FIR registered against the accused under the SC/ST Act.
In the Haldwani purification incident, Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge has now released a video questioning the silence of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union Home Minister Amit Shah. Kharge said that if Modi were a Dalit and something like this happened to him, would he still remain silent in the same way?
Kharge had written a letter to JP Nadda Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge wrote to Union Minister JP Nadda, questioning why an FIR had not yet been registered in connection with the purification incident despite the assurance given by the minister in Parliament. He urged Nadda to direct Uttarakhand Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami to register a case against those involved.
