Teachers ‘assaulted’ by SP MLA; govt asked to probe incident

UP Legislative Council chairman Ganesh Shankar Pandey on Tuesday directed the state government to conduct a high-level inquiry into an incident of Aligarh where Samajwadi Party MLA Bhagwan Sharma alias Guddu Pandit allegedly assaulted some Urdu teachers and misbehaved with them.

Pandey asked the government to complete the inquiry during the ongoing session and inform the House about the findings. He also directed the government to take action against the guilty and ensure the safety of teachers, who were allegedly still receiving threats from the MLA.

The Chairman issued the directives when members of a teachers' group sought adjournment of the House for a discussion on the incident, which took place on Monday. Their leader Om Prakash Sharma said that members of the Urdu Teachers Association of Aligarh had met Pandit to hand over a memorandum of demands with a request to take these up with Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav.

After taking the memorandum, Pandit asked the teachers some absurd questions. Unhappy with their replies, Pandit assaulted the teachers and used abusive language with them, Sharma said. When a report of the incident appeared in local newspapers, the MLA started threatening the teachers to issue a statement that no such incident had taken place.

Leader of the House Ahmed Hasan said that nearly 150 to 200 teachers had gone to the MLA with a memorandum of four demands, including that they should be provided mobile phones, when one of them was allegedly slapped there. Hasan said that the teachers later met the Divisional Commissioner and burnt an effigy of the MLA, "but they gave no complaint to the police". Hasan assured that an inquiry would be conducted into the matter and necessary action taken.

Leader of Opposition Naseemuddin Siddiqui said that the MLA involved in the incident belonged to the ruling party and he was threatening the teachers. At this, Hasan countered that when Pandit was in BSP and he committed several crimes, the BSP government protected him for five years. When opposition members asked why the SP gave ticket to contest the election to a man like Pandit, Hasan said that the SP gave him the ticket when he got reformed.

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