Tehelka case makes firms think twice before hiring women: Naresh Agarwal

Samajwadi Party leader Naresh Agarwal has performed his foot-in-the-mouth act once again. This time he has set off a controversy with his insensitive and sexist comments over the Tehelka sex scandal and the Assam rape case.

Referring to the Tarun Tejpal case, the Samajwadi Party leader said that companies are now scared of hiring women. He also said women’s revealing clothes were also responsible for rape incidents to a great extent. “Women should dress more appropriately so that they don’t draw unwanted attention,” he said.

“The media talks only about sexual harassment but the flip side to this is that many organisations are now scared of hiring women employees,” Agarwal said.

On the Assam gang-rape case, he said that rape is a daily phenomenon and such incidents happen regularly in the national capital.

NCW member Nirmala Samant has described the remarks as derogatory. She also asked Agarwal to apologise to women at large.

Earlier this month, targeting BJP’s prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi, Agarwal had said that a person who used to sell tea cannot have a national perspective and is not fit to be the prime minister of the country.

That is not all, in October, the Samajwadi Party leader, known for shooting from the lips rather irresponsibly, while taking a jibe at the BJP had said: “There is a saying in my village that says when someone goes to take blessings from a ‘widow’, she asks the person to become like her.

Similarly, the BJP is trying to make everybody like themselves.”

Standing by his remark, Naresh Agarwal asserted that he had just used a rural idiom to describe the BJP.