BackPoll: Is V.K. Singh’s dog analogy a deliberate insult or a comment taken out of context?
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Union minister of state for external affairs V.K. Singh on Thursday kicked up a storm with his comments that the Centre cannot be blamed if somebody throws a stone at a dog. The comments, made in an attempt to shield the Centre from criticism for the Faridabad incident, where two children of a Dalit family were burnt alive, have prompted opposition demands for his ouster.
“See, the thing is, never associate local incidents with the central government. There is an inquiry going on. There was a dispute between families. The dispute...how did it turn out...where did the administration fail, after these it come to the Centre. For everything...like if somebody throws a stone at a dog, then the government is responsible...it is not like that," the former army chief said in Ghaziabad in Uttar Pradesh, while referring to the incident.
Although Singh later clarified on Twitter that his statement was not intended to draw an analogy, the opposition is set on demands for his resignation, with Congress terming the comparison as “inhumane", and the CPI claiming that comments like this are “visible" signs of emergence of cultural “fascism" in the country under the Narendra Modi regime.
Is the minister guilty of being callous, deliberately insulting minorities and could have chosen better words but didn’t? Or has his statement been taken out of context?
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