30 MPs on fact-finding mission to land in state, govt wants them to watch English films enroute

Less than a week after Congress president Sonia Gandhi visited Jind in Haryana to visit the family of a rape victim, 30 MPs will be in Jind and Kaithal on October 17 to meet the families of Dalit rape victims.

The gravity of the situation notwithstanding, the state government seems to have chosen this opportunity to impress the visiting MPs with its hospitality. Among the various duties assigned to senior IAS officers managing the trip is to ensure that these MPs have a stock of English movies to watch in the bus enroute from Delhi to Jind.

The 30-member parliamentary committee on welfare of SCs and STs (2012-2013) has 20 MPs from the Lok Sabha and 10 from the Rajya Sabha. The committee, headed by Gobinda Chandra Naskar, will examine cases of gangrape of Dalit girls, allegedly at the hands of the dominant Jat community men.

Keeping in view the seriousness of the issue, most of these MPs are expected to be on this "ground reality" visit and the state is going all out to lay the red carpet.

P K Mahapatra, the resident commissioner at Haryana Bhawan, "will arrange a good Volvo (35 seater) with DVD facility and English films to be provided by the transport department," states the programme sheet of the trip. it added: "A luxury (sic) car for the chairman of the committee, along with a standby car, will also be arranged by the resident commissioner of Haryana Bhawan for the visit of the parliamentary committee."

The venue for the committee's breakfast and lunch is Tiliyar Lake in Rohtak — a scenic tourist complex on the way. Rohtak DC has been asked to be there to receive the team and coordinate.

However, the team will not visit the houses of the victims. The government has arranged for the committee members to meet the victims' families in the PWD rest house in Jind first and later at a government tourist complex in Kaithal. The families have been called to these places.

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