Dehradun:Uttarakhand's Parliamentary Affairs Minister Prem Chand Aggarwal was summoned by the state BJP on Sunday and strictly instructed to exercise restraint in public and use appropriate vocabulary.
At the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) state party headquarters, Agrawal met state BJP president Mahendra Bhatt and state general secretary, Ajay Kumar and clarified his stand on the controversy surrounding him for the last few days.
Later, Bhatt said that during the meeting, Aggarwal was told that the kind of atmosphere created in the state due to various misunderstandings or other reasons is not appropriate and the party expects correct choice of words and restrained behaviour from him.
The state BJP president said, "The minister has said that whatever is coming out, he did not mean it even remotely. Still, if there is an abusive word, it is from before his statement and neither is it about the mountain or the plain."
Bhatt said that the minister has already expressed regret on this whole issue. He said that the minister has expressed regret and made it clear that in future he will take special care in choosing words.
He said, "These are the same people who do not like unity inside Devbhoomi." Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami also said that Uttarakhand belongs to everyone. Talking to reporters here, he said, "There are different regions in the state, there are different places and everyone will work together to take the state forward."
This comes as while talking to reporters outside the assembly, Aggarwal recently said that Congress MLA from Dwarahat Madan Singh Bisht had probably come drunk to the House. This hurt Bisht and other Congress legislators representing the hills.
This had led to a heated argument between Aggarwal and opposition members in the Assembly also on Friday when someone from the opposition benches said the minister had targeted the hill people through his remark.
Aggarwal had reacted angrily to this asking them not to speak in terms of “pahadi” and “desi”. People did not fight for statehood to Uttarakhand to witness this, he had said. Aggarwal on Saturday said his statement was "twisted" and offered an apology in the state assembly.
