Nandy should be arrested immediately: Mayawati

Bahujan Samaj Party chief Mayawati on Saturday demanded that Rajasthan government should immediately send author Ashish Nandy to jail over his controversial remarks at the Jaipur Literary Festival that ‘most corrupt people come from OBC, SC and ST communities’.

Speaking at a panel discussion in Jaipur, Nandy stoked a major row with his comments that people belonging to OBC, SC and ST communities were the ‘most corrupt’.

Calling Nandy's remarks as ‘farthest from truth, condemnable, unfortunate and reflective of a casteist mindset’, Mayawati said Nandy should immediately tender an apology.

"He should seek an apology from these sections of the population immediately and our party strongly condemns it. Our party also demands that Rajasthan government should immediately file a case under the SC/ST Act and other stringent sections and send him to jail," Mayawati told reporters in New Delhi referring to Nandy's remark.

"Otherwise, people could even be compelled to get out on the roads in protest against these remarks," she added. Mayawati said the comments by Nandy seemed to have been made under a "well thought-out scheme to defame these sections".

The BSP chief also asked the organisers of the Jaipur Literary Festival to expel Nandy from the event. When one of the reporters asked Mayawati about the next step that she intended to take in the matter, the BSP supremo said "we are watching the response of Rajasthan government and whether the organisers have expelled Nandy. And in what manner Nandy seeks an apology, we will take that also with seriousness before taking any step," she said.

To a question about certain remarks he attributed to UP minister Azam Khan asking girls not to become like Mayawati, she said Azam Khan was known to make various kinds of remarks but she did not take them seriously.