Thaindian News

Noida, July 3 (IANS) Congress leader Sachin Pilot, the junior minister for communications and IT, Sunday dared yoga guru Baba Ramdev to join politics and criticised his anti-corruption agitation.

He said that Ramdev should not disgrace saints by wearing saffron robes and should plunge into the political arena for raising issues.

Pilot said the yoga guru was always shielding himself either behind saffron robes or women’s clothes. The reference was to the women’s clothes Ramdev worse to flee the capital after the police crackdown on his protest at Delhi’s Ramlila grounds post midnoght June 4.

The Gujjar leader was addressing a press conference in Noida to mobilise support for a farmers’ meeting in Aligarh July 9 that will be addressed by Congress general secretary Rahul Gandhi.

The Mayawati administration in Uttar Pradesh late Saturday accepted the Congress plea to organise a farmers meeting in Aligarh.

The Bahujan Samaj Party government had earlier flatly denied permission to Gandhi to address a rally of farmers in Bhatta-Parsaul village in Greater Noida, where acquisition of land for industrial purposes sparked off a violent clash between the farmers and police leading to the death of four people, including two policemen May 7.

On the government’s stand not to allow the meeting at Bhatta-Parsaul, Pilot said: “The government acted undemocratically by not allowing Rahul Gandhi to hold a meeting in the village where farmers were shot dead and women were assaulted.”

“It was an injustice with the farmers. Their land was grabbed and they were not permitted to put forward their grievances in a democratic country. When Rahul Gandhi raised these issues, curbs against assembly of people were imposed,” he said.