No sooner had the Congress picked Charanjit Singh Channi as the next chief minister of Punjab that the BJP raked up a controversy which goes back to 2018, when an IAS officer alleged that Channi sent her an inappropriate text.
BJP’s IT cell head Amit Malviya tweeted an old news report and said that the new chief minister of Punjab faced action in a three-year-old #MeToo case against him.
“He had allegedly sent an inappropriate text to a woman IAS officer in 2018. It was covered up but the case resurfaced when Punjab Women’s Commission sent notice,” Malviya tweeted, adding “Well done, Rahul”.
Former chief minister Captain Amarinder Singh had earlier said that Channi had apologised and the issue was resolved to the IAS officer’s satisfaction. Channi had also admitted that the message was inadvertently sent to the women IAS officer’s mobile phone and the matter has been resolved.
However, in May this year, Punjab’s Women Commission had sought a reply from the state government over the issue. It also threatened to go on a hunger strike if the state government failed to apprise her within a week of its stand on the “inappropriate text” message allegedly sent by Channi.
Malviya also posted a story reported in May this year that said that outgoing chief minister Amarinder Singh’s rivals within the party had accused him of “hounding” them with old cases.
In another tweet, the BJP leader said, “In the last few days, Congress in Rajasthan passed a bill to register child marriages, giving it legitimacy and robbing young girls of their growing up years, and now has elevated a MeToo accused as CM of Punjab. Let’s wait for Rahul Gandhi to pontificate on women empowerment.”
Channi, 58, becomes chief minister with less than six month to go before the assembly polls in Punjab. Amarinder Singh was nudged into quitting ostensibly over his “failure” to fulfil the promises made by the party in the 2017 assembly polls.