Will you lathi charge your children? Varun Gandhi’s swipe at Yogi govt

Notwithstanding the raps he has been getting for speaking against his own party, BJP MP Varun Gandhi on Sunday lashed out at the Yogi Adityanath government in Uttar Pradesh over the police crackdown on a rally by job seekers in Lucknow.

Sharing a video of police chasing and beating protesters with lathis, on Twitter, Gandhi asked authorities why no recruitments are being made if the government claims of having vacancies and eligible candidates.

Also read: Varun Gandhi shares clip of farmer setting crop afire, says ‘must rethink farm policy’

In his tweet, he also asked authorities if they would issue similar orders if their children were in the place of the protesters.

“They are also children of Mother India. Leave alone fulfilling their demands, no one is even ready to listen to them. And there is a lathi charge on them on the top of that. Would you have treated your children the same way? If you have vacancies and eligible candidates, where there is no recruitment,” he tweeted.

Hundreds of job seekers have been staging a protest against the alleged irregularities in an entrance examination to recruit 69,000 assistant teachers in 2019. On Saturday, police resorted to lathi charge when the protesters were holding a candlelight march on a road leading to chief minister Adityanath’s residence.

Samajwadi Party also condemned the incident, sharing a video of the ‘brutal lathicharge’.

This is not the first time, Gandhi went against the party line to criticise the BJP government. In October, Gandhi to the surprise of his colleagues had condemned the killing of four farmers in Uttar Pradesh’s Lakshmipur Kheri after the convoy allegedly led by the son of a Union minister mowed them down.

The BJP was quick to exclude him and his mother Maneka Gandhi from the party’s new executive committee list.

Also read: Varun Gandhi on Kangana’s remark: ‘Should I call it madness or treason?’

Seemingly not intimidated by the snub, Gandhi last month wrote to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, listing out four demands of farmers including the implementation of MSP and ex-gratia for those who died during protests, soon after the government announced to roll back the farm laws.