Thiruvananthapuram: Hours after landing in a fresh controversy, Kerala’s lone BJP MP and Union minister Suresh Gopi Sunday withdrew his statement that a Brahmin or Naidu should head the tribal affairs ministry.
On Sunday, in his address for the Kerala BJP unit’s election campaign in Delhi’s Mayur Vihar, the Thrissur MP said it was a curse in India that a person from the tribal community would always be heading the ministry. Gopi said he had, since his nomination as a Rajya Sabha MP in 2016, been requesting Prime Minister Narendra Modi to give him the department.
“It is my dream that a person from the upper caste should be their (tribal community) minister. If there is a minister from the tribal community, he should be appointed for the welfare of the upper caste communities. This reformation should happen in our democratic society,” said the Minister of State for Petroleum and Natural Gas Gopi, adding that a person from the upper caste taking care of tribal welfare will bring big change. “I have requested this from the Prime Minister.”
The controversial statement landed Gopi, who is from the upper-caste Nair community, in a soup, with many criticising him for the casteist remarks.
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Following this, Gopi said he wanted to remove the discrimination in allotting portfolios and that his statement was misinterpreted.
“My party appointed a member from the tribal community as the president. I also said that a person from the tribal community should be appointed for the welfare of the upper caste,” Gopi told the media.
Reacting to the casteist remarks, Communist Party of India state secretary Binoy Viswam said that Gopi was a defender of the Varna system. Addressing the media, Viswam said Gopi should be removed from his ministry.
“Another minister from Kerala said Kerala should be backward in health and education for higher Budget allocation. We, Kerala, say that we can not do it. We would not beg for anything. The public is witnessing the real face of the BJP,” Viswom said.
Gopi, BJP’s first elected MP from the state, actor-turned-politician, had triumphed in the Thrissur constituency election with a significant margin of over 70,000 votes against senior Congress leader K. Muraleedharan, and CPI’s advocate V.S. Sunil Kumar.
However, the MP is known for making controversial statements back to back. A month after winning his seat, Gopi had said he hoped to be relieved from his ministerial post as he wanted to act in movies.
Addressing the BJP campaign meeting Sunday, Gopi said Kerala should utilise the funds allocated by the central government instead of crying about denied funds.
Declare Kerala backward for higher fund allotment: Kurian
Hours after Finance Minister Nirmala Seetharam announced the Union Budget, Minister of State for Fisheries, Animal Husbandry and Dairying and Minority Affairs from Kerala George Kurian said, “Declare Kerala backward… Say we don’t have roads, we don’t have education. If Kerala declares that the state is educationally and socially backward, and infrastructure-wise backward, the (Finance) Commission will examine this and give a report to the government.”
Kurian was responding to the ruling Left Democratic Front’s and Congress’s criticisms of the fund allocation to Kerala in the Union Budget as ‘anti-Kerala’. The budget failed to allot funds to the state—including for rehabilitating the victims of the devastating landslides in Wayanad.
Hailing from Kottayam, Kurian has been with the BJP since the 1980s. The party’s national executive member has also held multiple responsibilities in the party’s youth wing, the Yuva Morcha.
