A celebration honouring Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel’s birth anniversary turned tense in Satna, Madhya Pradesh, on Friday when BJP MP Ganesh Singh slapped a municipal crane operator.
According to an NDTV report, the incident took place at the city’s Semriya Chowk, during a ‘Run for Unity’ event organised to mark the day.
Videos shared on social media showed that MP was in a hydraulic crane to garland the Ambedkar statue. However, while descending, the machine jolted and stopped mid-air for a few seconds.
After descending, the visibly angry lawmaker called the operator, who has been identified as Ganesh Kushwaha, and slapped him publicly.
Eyewitnesses quoted by NDTV said that the machine jerked due to a minor technical fault.
“The operator was only doing his job. The sudden jerk was mechanical. But the MP lost his temper,” a municipal worker who was present during the incident told the news channel.
However, Neeta Sonia, a representative of the MP, defended the assault in a social media post.
“The MP merely slapped him. His arms and legs should have been broken. If he had fallen from that height, who would have taken responsibility?” she wrote, according to NDTV.
Congress raps BJP over incident
Meanwhile, the Congress, which is in Opposition in the state, trained guns at the BJP over the incident.
“Ganesh Singh, the arrogant and controversy-prone MP from Satna, slapped a municipal crane operator,” the Madhya Pradesh unit of the Congress wrote in a post in Hindi on X.
“The poor man’s only fault was that he went to rescue the MP, who was trapped in the crane. The arrogance and feudal mindset of BJP’s public representatives are clearly getting the better of them.”
Congress MLA and district president Siddharth Kushwaha told PTI that people in the ruling government in the state are not mindful of their actions.
“The crane was not meant to be used in that manner at the event. It was wrong to climb onto it, and the machine’s condition should have been checked beforehand. Ganesh Singh slapping one of the workers out of fear was also wrong,” Kushwaha added.
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