Uttar Pradesh BJP MLA beats school inspector as BJP MP, officers look on

A Bharatiya Janata Party MLA allegedly roughed up a district inspector of schools (DIOS) during a review meeting in Ballia district of eastern Uttar Pradesh, reportedly in presence of BJP Ballia Member of Parliament Bharat Singh, the District Magistrate and many senior officers in the auditorium of the collectorate on Saturday, September 22.  Those who were supposed to protect the DIOS tried their best to hush up the scandal, but it went viral on social media sites.

After Education Department officers across Uttar Pradesh watched the clipping of the incident and were agitated over the manhandling of the school inspector, Bairia MLA Surendra Singh, who had left the meeting hall after thrashing Narendra Deo, came to the bungalow of the District Magistrate Bhawani Singh Khangarot after two hours and apologised to the Deo. The lawmaker also reportedly ensured that the video of him standing before the officer and apologising was circulated on social media sites.

Singh and his aides allegedly attacked Deo, when the latter was trying to reply to the MLA’s allegation that he was not solving day-to-day problems of teachers. Later, the DM took the DIOS to his official residence, allegedly to force him to forget about whatever happened in the meeting. But by that time, someone had posted the video of the incident shot on a mobile phone to the WhatsApp group of the Education Department officers. Some officers of Gorakhpur, where Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath was camping, sought time to register their protest against the incident. Sources said while Adityanath had yet to react to the incident, the rogue lawmaker asked his aide to make a video while he would say sorry to Deo.

An Education Department officer alleged that many teachers who stay in cities don’t attend the schools in villages.“They grease the palm of local representatives in return for security of their jobs. Such people would obviously dislike any officer who would proactively try to make them go by the book”, alleged the officer, who didn’t want to be named.

Playing down the seriousness of the incident, the DM said, “Nothing had happened between the MLA and the DIOS.”

Surendra Singh is no stranger to controversy. In April 2018, he infamously said a public rally in Ballia that the next Lok Sabha elections were going to be Islam versus God. In June 2018, he asked his supporters at a public meeting to beat officers with their shoes if they sought bribes. A month later, he told reporters, “Even Lord Ram would not have been able to stop rapes”, when they queried him about the Unnao rape case in which BJP’s Bangarmau MLA Kuldeep Singh Sengar is an accused.