Amid enough heated exchanges, protests and violent clashes over Citizenship Amendment Act, Bharatiya Janata Party leader Kailash Vijayvargiya has made a bizarre statement leaving netizens erupt a ‘Poha’ bomb on social media.
Party’s general secretary Vijayvargiya, while speaking at a seminar in support of CAA on Thursday, said that he suspected some of the labourers carrying out construction work at his house recently were likely to be Bangladeshis as they had “strange” eating habits and were consuming only ‘poha’ (flattened rice). Their “strange” eating habits aroused suspicion about their nationality.
“When a new room was being added at my house recently, I found eating habits of some of the workers “strange” as “they were eating only `poha’ (flattened rice)”, he said.
Vijayvargiya further mentioned that two days later after he became suspicious, they stopped working at his house.“I have not filed any police complaint yet. I only mentioned this incident to warn people,” he said.
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After Vijayvargiya made the comments, Twitter erupted with responses trolling the minister for judging the labourers’ ethnicity based on their eating habits. Here are some of the reactions from the netizens –
This means you are not paying them well, they could only afford ‘poha.’ It might sound strange to you,but in Bengal, we don’t call it poha! https://t.co/MNyHuxzq5k
— vijaita singh (@vijaita) January 24, 2020
Poha is my comfort food. Tagore is my comfort read. Bangla is my comfort language. Guess I start searching for my papers asap. ? https://t.co/OJRwaqHkTl
— Sasidharan Pazhoor (@inquestioner) January 24, 2020
If not Poha, what else you expect labourers to bring with them – Butter chicken?
— Ravinder Singh (@_RavinderSingh_) January 24, 2020
I literally eat only poha for breakfast. Guess I’m Bangladeshi too. https://t.co/Qjr4mwmW0Q
— अंशुल (@Ghair_Kanooni) January 24, 2020
My dhobi showed up eating a burger. I think he’s American.
— Kajol Srinivasan (@LOLrakshak) January 24, 2020