Is communicating with Dalits a sin? Congress on Rahul Gandhi’s Darbhanga trip

Congress president and Leader of the Opposition in the Rajya Sabha Mallikarjun Kharge on 15 May, Thursday, hit out at the JDU-BJP government in Bihar, accusing it of sheer dictatorship in trying to prevent Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi from holding a Shiksha Nyay Samvad talk in Darbhanga.

Gandhi addressed students at Mithila University’s Ambedkar Hostel, despite being allegedly denied permission to hold the event.

“Is communicating with Dalit, deprived and Backward Classes students against the Constitution? Is it a sin to talk to them about their education, their recruitment exams and jobs?” asked Kharge.

“It is the height of dictatorship that the JDU-BJP government prevented Rahul Gandhi from attending the Shiksha Nyay Samvad programme at Ambedkar Hostel in Darbhanga, Bihar,” he said in a post on X in Hindi.

Kharge said the birthplace of democracy, Bihar, will remember this “injustice” and will give a befitting reply to JDU-BJP when the time comes.

Congress general secretary Jairam Ramesh shared a video of police action preventing Gandhi from going to the Ambedkar students’ hostel in Darbhanga.

“India is a democracy, it is governed by the Constitution, not by dictatorship. No one can stop us from raising our voice for social justice and education,” Ramesh said in his post on X.

The Congress had also expressed outrage at the suggestion by the authorities to change the venue to an alternative site.

Addressing the students, Gandhi claimed that Prime Minister Narendra Modi had agreed to hold a caste census “out of fear” of the country’s deprived population, to which the opposition was lending its voice.

The Lok Sabha LoP participated in a charged-up interaction with students in the Darbhanga district of Bihar.

“As you all are aware, my car was stopped at the gate (of Mithila University). But I did not relent. I got out and took a circuitous route to reach here on foot,” said the Rae Bareli MP, who has launched the Shiksha Nyay Samvad, a public interaction programme, in Bihar, where assembly polls are due later this year.