Poll fever puts pregnant woman in peril

Jaipur: Government officials sent an eight-month pregnant women from Sirohi to attend Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s rally in Jaipur on Saturday. The lady was in the overloaded bus that met with an accident while returning home from the rally. Vasundhara Raje government had brought 2.38 lakh beneficiaries of State and Central government welfare schemes for the PM’s dialogue with them.

The task of identifying beneficiaries in each of the 12 shortlisted schemes and arranging their travel was given to government officials. District collectors were given the target; they subsequently identified the beneficiaries and even sent personal invitation letters to them. “How can they be so inhuman to send an eight month pregnant lady on 400-km journey (one way) to listen the PM’s speech?  I ask BJP government if any public representative or government official would send their women to listen the PM’s speech in this condition?” former Congress MLA from Sirohi asked.

He also alleged that 65 people were crammed in a bus without even checking that the driver was drunk. “It clearly shows insensitivity of the BJP,” Mr. Lodha alleged. He has demanded higher compensation for the accident victims.  When asked, BJP’s media in charge Anand Sharma said that he was not aware of it and claimed that the the responsibility of identifying beneficiaries and arranging the travel was entirely with the government and the party had no role to play in it.

Higher education minister Kiran Maheshwari had claimed that ministers, MPs and MLAs had been asked to identify the beneficiaries in their constituencies and bring them to the rally. There are also allegations of coercion to force the beneficiaries. Government officials who were given specific target of ‘arranging’ beneficiaries for the rally allegedly threatened to struck off their names from the scheme or stop future payments if they refused to go.