Facing protests over his remarks regarding Bihar, Union Minister Piyush Goyal on Thursday withdrew his statement and said he had no intention to insult the state or its people. “At the outset, let me clarify that there is absolutely no intention of insulting either Bihar or the people of Bihar. And if at all it has hurt anybody, I will immediately withdraw that statement. It was not made with any malice to anybody at all,” he said in the Rajya Sabha.
Goyal had made the remark on Tuesday in the Upper House when Manoj Kumar Jha (RJD) was speaking during a discussion on the Appropriation Bill seeking Parliament’s nod for additional spending.
Jha said an insult to Bihar is an insult to the entire country, and demanded Goyal apologise for his remark. Leader of Opposition and Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge too joined Jha in demanding an apology from Goyal.
The RJD MP had on Wednesday written a letter to Chairman Jagdeep Dhankhar about the minister’s “demeaning” remark and demanded an apology from the BJP leader. Jha in his letter to Dhankhar also urged him to delete the comment that, he said, was uncalled for and smacked of “elitism”. Jha said Goyal had shown insensitivity towards Bihar and complained that the people of Bihar were “always treated like second class citizens”.
Earlier in the day, RJD MPs and other members from Bihar protested near Mahtama Gandhi’s statue in Parliament complex and raised slogans against the minister.
Bihar Deputy Chief Minister Tejashwi Yadav shared the clip of the exchange between his party MP and the Union minister on Wednesday in a post slamming the minister.
Also Read: Guj Man Falls To Death While Trying To Scale ‘Trump Wall’
