A day after the BJP issued a show-cause notice to one of its MLAs in Uttar Pradesh for allegedly asking people not to buy vegetables from Muslims, another legislator of the same party got caught in a similar controversy.
A video went viral on Wednesday of BJP MLA Brijbhushan Rajput threatening a vegetable vendor in his residential locality of Gomti Nagar in Lucknow. Brijbhushan Rajput is the MLA for Charkahari, a constituency in Mahoba district.
The video of the incident shows Rajput and another person questioning a vegetable cart vendor about his name. The vendor replies "Rajkumar", following which he is accused of lying. The vendor is threatened with assault and driven away from the locality.
Rajput told a media outlet that the vendor was a Muslim but was selling his produce under a Hindu name. He also claimed Hindus were scared due to the coronavirus situation. Rajput told ANI, "I reprimanded him because he was lying. He said his name was Rajkumar while his name is Rehmuddin. He wasn't wearing masks and gloves. We know 16 vegetable sellers in Kanpur and 1 in Lucknow tested COVID-19 positive."
Rajput told News 18 Hindi that he would ask the government to issue ID cards to vegetable vendors and others selling essential commodities. He even claimed the government should investigate whether "Pakistan or the ISI" were behind the plot.
Interestingly, in 2017, Rajput warned that if Muslims opposed the building of a Ram temple in Ayodhya, then he would obstruct the Haj.
Earlier this week, Barhaj MLA Suresh Tiwari was seen in a video clip purportedly telling people, “I am saying this openly: don't purchase vegetables from Muslims.”
When asked about his remark, Tiwari said, “On April 17 or 18, I was distributing masks and sanitisers among the people. When I reached the boundary of the nagar palika, around 17-18 people came to me and started complaining against Tablighi Jamaat members creating chaos and spreading coronavirus and also contaminating vegetables with their saliva.”
“I told them not to fight with them or take law into their own hands, but simply to stop purchasing from them,” he said.
“There are many Muslim vendors in Barhaj, too and I only advised people not to purchase from them to be saved from the deadly virus,” Tiwari added.
