New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi, during a public demonstration at the Kartar Nagar de Delhi on Wednesday, discouraged BJP candidates to play their feet when they were introduced on stage.
When Patparganj BJP candidate, Ravinder Singh Negi, approached Prime Minister Modi and tried to touch his feet, the prime minister immediately corresponded by touching Negi’s feet three times, pointing against such gestures.
A minute later, Vishwas Nagar candidate, Om Prakash Sharma, also tried to touch the feet of Prime Minister Modi, but was arrested halfway. The two exchanged some words, with Prime Minister Modi seem to deter it from making the attempt.
Ravinder Negi, the BJP councilor of Vinod Nagar in eastern Delhi, arrived at the headlines last year for his actions involving local merchants. The videos appeared on the social networks that show it by visiting stores and urging merchants from a particular community to show their real names in stores.
Negi’s initiative, from which BJP was distanced, was not part of any official directive. He told merchants, especially those who sell dairy products, that their names must reflect their religious identity to align with the feelings of Hindu customers during Navratri. He was seen asking a dairy seller why his sign said “Rawal Dairy” instead of his Muslim name, accusing him of betraying the Hindu community. Negi also faced a street seller for not moving his post of a predominantly Hindu area, warning of confiscation if he did not comply.
Negi defended his actions, describing the impulse as an awareness initiative promoted by public complaints. He said the people were upset when they made payments to the stores that showed Hindu names only to discover that the merchants were of a different community. He said that the impulse had no affiliation to the party and was based on community feelings, particularly in the period prior to Navratri, when dairy consumption increases among Hindu customers.