Punjab Congress staged a protest on Monday against the BJP and RSS over a “purification” ritual allegedly conducted at Uttarakhand’s Haldwani Ramlila Ground after a Congress rally attended by party president Mallikarjun Kharge. The protesters also demanded that the FIR registered against Rahul Gandhi over his remarks on the incident be withdrawn.Congress MP Sukhjinder Singh Randhawa condemned the ritual and demanded action against those who organised it. “The Congress party in Punjab, and across India, does not believe in caste-based discrimination. We demand that an FIR be registered against the person who performed the ‘purification’ in Haldwani. The false FIR against Rahul Gandhi should be discarded immediately,” news agency ANI quoted Randhawa saying.Former Punjab chief minister and Punjab Congress campaign committee chairperson Charanjit Singh Channi said the protest was against what he described as the “discriminatory mindset” of the BJP and RSS. “We have staged a protest against the mindset of the RSS and the BJP, specifically regarding the incident where the stage was ‘purified’ after Mallikarjun Kharge had stepped onto it. They treated the stage as ‘contaminated’ simply because a Dalit had set foot on it. An FIR must be registered against those responsible for this act. This protest serves as an expression of our anger and a warning to the government,” Channi said.
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The protest comes days after Haldwani City Kotwali Police registered an FIR against Rahul Gandhi on August 30 following a complaint over his remarks about the ritual. The complainant, Amit Kumar, a 26-year-old Valmiki community member and office-bearer of Shri Ram Sena Dharmarth Seva Nyas, alleged that Gandhi’s comments hurt the sentiments of the Scheduled Caste community.According to the complaint, Gandhi had on August 29 described the “shuddhikaran yajna” at Haldwani’s Ramlila Ground as an act of untouchability and anti-Dalit discrimination. The FIR invokes provisions of the SC/ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989, and relevant sections of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS) and Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita (BNSS). The organisers, however, have denied that the ritual had any caste-based motive.
