The PM became the latest shoegate victim when a member of the ABVP, the BJP’s youth wing, hurled his sneaker at him.
Prime minister Manmohan Singh became the latest shoegate victim when a member of the ABVP, the BJP’s youth wing, hurled his sneaker at him in Ahmedabad on Sunday.
The shoe missed Singh by several feet. The man was nabbed and confessed he only wanted instant publicity. The PM forgave him while the BJP condemned the incident.
Singh was addressing a public meeting from a dais 30 feet high at Tagore Hall grounds when Hitesh Chauhan, a techie sitting near the press gallery in the first row, took off his right shoe and hurled it in Singh’s direction — a protest seen as more symbolic than an attempt to hit the PM.
Within seconds the PM’s special protection group (SPG) sleuths detained the boy and whisked him away. Though the bodyguards on the dais were alerted, the PM did not falter in his speech for even a second. He later asked Congress leader Shaktisinh Gohil not to press charges on the youth.
Chauhan, a fourth semester computer engineering student from Gandhingar, was taken to Ellisbridge police station, where he said his motivation was instant publicity. The situation was brought under control with policemen sternly controlling the audience’s curiosity, but the brief incident exposed holes in security arrangements. Had the shoe not been an innocuous piece of foam the polls would have seen a whole new twist.
Congress spokesperson M Veerappa Moily has sought an apology from Modi for the incident. “It (such incidents) reflects the kind of bad governance and law and order situation in the state,” he told a news agency in New Delhi.
The BJP condemned the incident and called it as an unestablished means of protest in a democracy. On the Congress’ accusation that the incident showed the law and order in Gujarat, BJP spokesperson Prakash Javadekar said: “That’s rubbish. When such an incident happened in Delhi on Chidambaram, what did it show?”
Another BJP spokesperson, Ravi Shankar Prasad, said the Gujarat police would take appropriate action against the guilty.
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