NAGPUR: Senior Congress’ Dalit leader and Nagpur North Assembly seat candidate Dr Nitin Raut has said that he was dropped at the last minute for a cabinet berth by the late Chief Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh for uttering ‘Jai Bhim’ in front of him in 1999.
Raut claimed that this was conveyed to him by former Minister the late Eknath Gaikwad.
After the remarks raked up a big controversy causing embarrassment to the Congress, Raut said that his remarks have been twisted.
The revelations on the purported incident — that earned indignation from Bharatiya Janata Party leaders — came on a day when Congress President Mallikarjun Kharge addressed a rally and AICC General Secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra will conduct a roadshow in Nagpur on Sunday.
When contacted, the prominent Dalit leader Raut said that as per its usual style, the BJP has taken part of the whole story and twisted it out of context to suit its agenda.
“I never said what is being attributed to me… It was told to me by a former Minister, the late Eknath Gaikwad. He took me aside and said my name was on the cabinet ministers’ list, but struck off at the last minute as I had uttered ‘Jai Bhim’ before Deshmukh, ” Raut told IANS while on a campaign tour in his constituency.
Raut added that he mentioned the incident (of 1999) while relating another incident in which some BJP leaders had allegedly forced one of their Dalit candidates to wash peoples’ feet to humiliate him.
“I pointed out how the BJP candidate may have done it out of ‘majboori’, but I had no such compulsions…I did not even visit Mantralaya for nearly two months after that incident. Something that I did not say is now being pinned onto me by the BJP and it’s childish on their part, ” said a miffed Raut, 72.
According to certain reports on the incident, Raut allegedly narrated how he was slighted by Deshmukh who did not like his chants of ‘Jai Bhim’ and took the step of ‘dropping’ him from the cabinet ministers’ list as he was a Dalit.
The late Gaikwad reportedly even cautioned Raut “to be careful” while talking before Deshmukh, and the latter responded by saying that if he lost the ministerial post for saying ‘Jai Bhim’ then he was proud.
Ultimately, Raut became a Minister of State for Home in 2008 under the then CM Ashok Chavan. He was later promoted to Cabinet Minister in 2009 again under Chavan, and inducted as a Cabinet Minister in the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) regime of ex-CM Uddhav Thackeray in 2019.
At one point in the Chavan ministry, Raut had abruptly quit as minister (February 2009) in anger after his MoS Home portfolio was split into ‘rural-urban’, and the urban department was assigned to senior Congressman M. Arif Naseem Khan, both reporting to (undivided) Nationalist Congress Party’s then Home Minister Jayant R. Patil.
Feeling that injustice was meted out to him, Raut was further cheesed off when Chavan failed to keep his promise of giving him Cabinet rank and instead chose to split the MoS portfolio and handed the urban department to Khan without informing him (Raut).
Years later in 2018, Raut was made Chairman of the AICC SC/ST Department from which he stepped down in 2021 as he was unable to juggle the dual responsibilities and adhere to the Congress policy of ‘one man-one post’.
The latest fracas attracted flak from state BJP Women’s Wing Chitra K. Wagh and others who hit at the Congress for its ‘anti-quotas’, ‘anti-backwards classes’ stance and ‘Muslim appeasement’ policy.
When contacted, a state Congress office-bearer said that “whatever Raut has said now is the official stand” of the party in the matter.
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