Family accuses Smriti Irani of turning blind eye to dying man

The family members of a doctor killed in a road accident allegedly involving Smriti Irani have accused the Human Resource Development Minister of looking away from the dying man and driving off.

The allegations, however, were strongly refuted by the Minister’s office, a man claiming to be an eyewitness and the local police. All of them said neither was the victim killed by a car belonging to Ms. Irani’s convoy, nor did she turn a blind eye to the victim.

The controversy started almost two days after the accident on the Yamuna Expressway as the 14-year-old daughter of the victim Ramesh Nagar alleged apathy by the Minister. The accident happened near Mathura when Nagar, his daughter Sandli and nine-year-old nephew Pankaj were riding a motorcycle. According to Sandli, their motorcycle was hit by a car belonging to Ms. Irani’s convoy.

“All the three of us fell off the motorcycle and suffered injuries. I was the first to rise and saw her [Ms. Irani] come out of her car towards us,” Sandli said. “Seeing my father bleeding, I begged the Minister with folded hands to help us. But she plainly refused to help,” she said. She went on to say that even as she was begging for help, another car belonging to the Minister’s convoy again hit her father who was trying to rise on his feet.

“We lay bleeding on the road as she [the Minister] drove away. A passerby called an ambulance and we were shifted to a hospital over half-an-hour after the accident,” Sandli told The Hindu.

In the FIR too, Nagar’s son Abhishek has stated that Ms. Irani ignored the victims. Abhishek, though, was not present at the accident spot.

This version has been contested by the Minister’s office which issued a statement that the Honda City car involved in the accident had “nothing to do with the Minister’s cavalcade.”

“Rather, the Minister directed the SSP, Mathura, to arrange an ambulance immediately so that the injured could be given medical treatment at the earliest (sic),” the statement read.

SSP Rakesh Singh told The Hindu that the owner of the Honda City car (registration number DL 3C BA 5315) was identified as Dimple Arora, a Delhi resident.

“The driver had abandoned the vehicle and fled. We have sent a team to Delhi to trace the car owner,” he said.

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Smriti Irani against AMU off-campus centres, says V-C

Aligarh Muslim University Vice-Chancellor Lt. Gen. (retd.) Zamiruddin Shah on Thursday said Union Human Resource Development Minister Smriti Irani had told a delegation from Kerala headed by Chief Minister Oomen Chandy that off-campus AMU Centres had been “illegally” established and her Ministry would not issue funds to them.

Rejecting the allegation of “illegality,” Lt. Gen. Shah emphasised that the AMU off-campus centres had been approved by the highest policymaking bodies — the AMU Executive Council, the Government of India and the President of India, who is AMU visitor. The V-C said that the AMU Act, 1920, permitted the university to have these centres, including the one in Malappuram, Kerala.

His confirmation comes after a controversy broke out on social media that he was “humiliated” by Ms. Irani when he went to meet her as part of a delegation led by the Kerala Chief Minister on January 8, to seek her support for the off-campus AMU centre in Malappuram, which is “developing much slower than expected.”

“At the meeting, the Chief Minster informed me that the HRD Minister said the AMU centres were illegally established and would not be funded by the HRD Ministry,” said the Vice-Chancellor.

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Mayawati, Yechury take on Smriti

The opposition that had walked out during Human Resource Development Minister Smriti Irani’s reply in the Lok Sabha on Dalit scholar Rohith Vemula’s suicide and the charges of sedition against students in JNU, mounted a concerted fight back in the Rajya Sabha, with rhetorical flourishes and a questioning of facts from the Communist Party of India (Marxist) and the Bahujan Samaj Party.

BSP chief Mayawati had been demanding the inclusion of a Dalit in the panel probing the suicide of Vemula, and attacked the government for appointing a one-man judicial commission of former Allahabad High Court judge Ashok Kumar Roopanwal.

“To my question whether a Dalit member is part of the commission, the government has not answered so far. On February 24, I had asked this question. Justice Roopanwal is from the upper caste. The government’s intention is dubious,” Ms Mayawati said.

CPI (M) general secretary Sitaram Yechury took on Ms Irani on certain facts in her reply to the short duration discussion.

Mr Yechury said Vemula, in his letter written a month before he committed suicide, had said he should be given a rope, which indicated the state of his mind. “What did the university do,” he asked. “You have pushed the child to commit suicide, it is virtually a murder,” he said referring to Vemula’s death and the actions of the government preceding it.

“The Minister quoted back Macbeth at me yesterday (Thursday) saying ‘fair is foul, foul is fair’. She is making all foul fair in the way that she is twisting facts,” said Mr. Yechury.

Govt. pushed Vemula to suicide: Yechury

CPI (M) general secretary Sitaram Yechury on Friday confronted HRD Minister Smriti Irani in the Rajya Sabha on certain facts about the suicide of Dalit student Rohit Vemula mentioned in her reply to the discussion in the Lok Sabha on Wednesday.

Mr. Yechury said Vemula, in his letter written a month before he committed suicide, had said he should be given a rope, which indicated the state of his mind. “What did the University do,” Mr. Yechury asked. “You have pushed the child to commit suicide; it is virtually a murder,” he said.

“The Minister quoted back Macbeth at me yesterday [Thursday] saying ‘fair is foul, foul is fair’. She is making all foul fair in the way that she is twisting facts,” said Mr. Yechury.

Questioning the veracity of the Facebook account that Ms Irani claimed was that of Vemula, Mr Yechury said, “Can a Facebook account be authenticated? Can ‘quotes’ from the ‘cyberspace’ be permitted without the same being authenticated?” He insisted that nothing should go on rec0ord in the House without being authenticated. Ms. Irani had quoted from a purported Facebook post by Vemula critical of Mr. Yechury and the CPI(M).

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Dalit student suicide: Attempt to make it a caste battle malicious, says Smriti Irani

The Central government swung into damage control mode as the suicide of Dalit student Rohith Vemula, research scholar at the University of Hyderabad (UoH), became a raging political controversy on Wednesday. The government and in fact the BJP too appeared anxious to divorce the death from any caste angle, a politically precarious situation for the party.

Union Minister for Human Resource Development (HRD) Smriti Irani, whose Ministry sent at least four reminders to the Vice-Chancellor of UoH on the clash between five students of the Ambedkar Students Association (ASA) and the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) termed as “malicious” the attempt to “project it as a caste battle.”

“This is not a Dalit versus non-Dalit issue as being projected by some to ignite passion,” Ms. Irani told a press conference, while rejecting allegations that her Ministry had put pressure on UoH to suspend Vemula.

“The document which is being circulated as Rohith Vemula’s suicide note does not mention any name or MP or Minister,” she pointed out.

She said the warden of the hostel from where the students were suspended was also a Dalit and the Council that upheld the suspension was also headed by a Dalit.

“A group of students allegedly attacked another student; we have ascertained that this is not a Dalit vs non-Dalit confrontation,” she said.

Row undermines BJP drive to widen social base

Ms. Irani said she had only followed the official manual in responding to Union Labour Minister Bandaru Dattatreya’s letter to her asking for disciplinary action against the Dalit students over campus violence.

“The students challenged the order of suspension from hostel. HC refused to put a stay on the order,” she explained.

“I have responded similarly to letters written by Congress leaders too. Congress leader Hanumanth Rao had also written to me about incidents at UoH. The Congress wants to exploit this issue which is expected but unfortunate. The Congress MP says that this problem persisted for four years. If they [Congress] had fixed the problem four years ago, perhaps Rohith’s life could have been saved.”

Mr. Dattatreya too put out a clarification, saying that he had “only forwarded the representation of a student body, and would have happily forwarded representations of other student bodies as well.”

BJP general secretary Muralidhar Rao termed the deceased student as “psychologically disturbed” on the basis of his suicide note. Party insiders also pointed to news reports challenging the Dalit status of the deceased student.

The fire-fighting attempts show that Vemula’s suicide has become a tough political problem for the BJP that had worked hard in the last few years to broaden its social base to include both Dalits and Other Backward Classes (OBCs). The party fears that the issue may affect its chances in Punjab and Uttar Pradesh in the coming year, when polls are due in these States.

“In both these States, the Dalit vote is crucial. In Uttar Pradesh in the last general elections, Dalits had voted for the BJP in large numbers. We fear this [suicide] will end all that,” said a senior office-bearer in the party.

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CBSE books to be made available online for free

All CBSE books and learning material will be made available online for free as part of the Centre’s good governance efforts, HRD Minister Smriti Irani said on Saturday.

At a function organised at a Kendriya Vidyalaya in east Delhi, she also said that initiatives would be undertaken to ensure holistic nurturing and improve learning outcomes at these schools.

“We made NCERT books available online for free through e-books and mobile applications a month-and-a-half ago. We are similarly going to make CBSE books available online along with additional learning material and videos as part of our good governance efforts,” Ms. Irani said.

She also reiterated that the Centre will launch Shaala Darpan and Saransh services (for Class I to Class XII students) in Kendriya Vidyalayas in the next academic year.

The Shaala Darpan service is aimed at using SMSes to keep parents informed about their wards’ attendance, time table and marks in exams while Saransh will help parents compare the subject-wise learning outcomes of their children, with others at the district, State and national levels.

Earlier, addressing the function, Delhi Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia stressed on the role of education in the lives of children.

“You need to check whether you are doing better than yesterday. Are we behaving better than yesterday? The focus should be that if a child gets out of educational institutes 20 years later, he/she should pass out as a sensible person,” he said.

The AAP leader urged schools to take the responsibility of turning children into good human beings.

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