In The Pre-Election Caste Balancing, A Minister Who Warns Women Against Live-In Relationships Joined The Modi Government
The murder of Delhi Shraddha Walkar was chosen by Kaushal Kishore, the Union Minister of State for Housing and Urban Affairs, to warn women about live-in relationships and advise them to consult their parents before choosing a life partner. Kaushal Kishore is better known as the BJP Dalit face of Uttar Pradesh. In addition to the crimes against women that allegedly prompted his remarks, he has long been involved in an anti-drug addiction campaign that is motivated by a personal tragedy.
A second-term member of parliament for Lucknow district’s Mohanlalganj seat. Kishore was one of those sworn in by Prime Minister Narendra Modi last year as part of a Cabinet enlargement that was perceived as a caste- and community-balancing effort before the important Uttar Pradesh elections. The promotion of Kishore to Union MoS was interpreted as a concession to the Dalit vote in UP.
His promotion, however, had taken many in the state BJP unit by surprise because the 63-year-old was one of the few party figures who had expressed concerns about how the Yogi Adityanath administration in Uttar Pradesh handled the second wave of the Covid pandemic.
In an email to Adityanath sent the day after he had lost his older brother to the virus in April 2021, Kishore expressed his concern about the conditions at two government hospitals in Lucknow: King George’s Medical University Hospital and Balrampur Hospital.
He had before pleaded with authorities to let patients receiving treatment in home isolation buy oxygen cylinders.
The second-largest Dalit community in the state and one with a significant presence in the Awadh region, where the minister is from, is the Pasi community, to which Kishore belongs to.
In 2002, Kishore ran for office as an Independent from the SC-reserved seat of Malihabad. He was appointed as MoS by the Samajwadi Party administration of Mulayam Singh Yadav in 2002–2003. Later, he established the Rashtrawadi Communist Party (RCP), and ran for office in the 2004 Lok Sabha election from the SC-reserved seat of Mohanlalganj, but was unsuccessful.
He joined the BJP in January 2014, and shortly after, Mohanlalganj gave him a ticket for the Lok Sabha elections. He triumphed this time thanks to the Modi wave. He was subsequently named by the party as the UP president of its Scheduled Caste Morcha.
Jai Devi, who is married to Kishore, was given a ticket for the 2017 Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections from the Malihabad constituency in the Lucknow district, and she won. Encouraged, he insisted that his son Vikas be given a ticket for the elections of 2022, but the party only consented to give Jai Devi a ticket. She was re-elected.
“Abhiyaan Kaushal Ka,” a campaign run by Kishore and Jai Devi, aims to rid society of drugs and raise awareness of drug addiction among young people. After losing their son Akash Kishore (28) to drug addiction in 2020, they started this campaign.
News Mania Desk
