Janta Ka Reporter: Uttarakhand: Saturday, June 30, 2018.
Uttarakhand
Chief Minister Trivedendra Singh Rawat on Friday faced social media roastings
after a video of a widowed teacher being ill-treated by him publicly went
viral. Angered by the widowed teacher Uttara Bahugana’s request for a transfer,
Rawat had ordered her immediate suspension and arrest. The teacher was later briefly
arrested.
However,
within hours of the video going viral, it has emerged that the chief minister’s
wife, also a teacher, has not been transferred for 22 years as she continued to
enjoy the plum posting. An RTI reply, tweeted by news agency ANI, revealed that
Sunita Rawat was posted in a school in Dehradun’s Ajabpur Kalan since 1996 even
after she received promotion in 2008.”
This has
further angered the social media users, who are now incensed over Rawat’s sheer
hypocrisy. Journalisr Saikat Dutta wrote, “BJP CM Rawat of Uttarkhand got a
teacher suspended and arrested for seeking a transfer after 25 years. His wife,
also a teacher, has been in Dehradun for 22 years, reveals RTI. Irony jumped
off a cliff again.” User Dinesh Vimal wrote, “She is CM’s wife so rules. they
bend rules or will not obey rules. Rules are for only poor people” Another user
Rashmi wrote, “Shame on y CM. Yr wife must get an transfer within next 48 hr if
really posted for 8 years.”
Congress
leader Arjun Modhwadia tweeted, “A teacher who asked for a transfer to Dehradun
after 25Yrs was denied By Utrakhand CM,suspended &arrested for shouting.A
teacher Sunita Rawat was transferred from a tough region within 4Yrs &has
been in Dehradun since 22 years as she is W/O BJP CM Rawat.”
In the viral
video, Bahuguna was seen pleading by invoking her desperate personal
circumstances as a result of losing husband’s death, but this had no impact on
the chief minister.
Bahuguna told
Rawat that she was a teacher in Uttarkashi while children were in Dehradun. The
death of her husband meant that there was no one to look after her children.
Sharing her woes while requesting for transfer during the chief minister’s
regular janta darbar (Citizens’ interaction with the CM), she requested him to
consider transfering her to Dehradun.
But Rawat
insultingly asked her, “Had you not realised this when you agreed to do this
job in the first place?” The teacher answered, “Yes, but I did not know that
(due to my husband’s death), I will be forced to go on exile. The job is
important to me, but so are my children. You will have to do justice to me
since beti bachao, beto padhao is the slogan of your party.”
Far from
showing sympathy to the elderly woman’s personal circumstances, Rawat was seen
losing cool. He was then heard ordering her immediate suspension and even get
her arrested, “Is ko suspend karo. (Suspend her immediately.)”
Rawat was
sworn in as the state’s new chief minister after his party, the BJP, won a
landslide in March last year.
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