‘Being jaativaadi is need of the hour’: Another Madhya Pradesh IAS officer kicks up a storm

Officer urges large gathering to assert caste identity in a video that has now gone viral. Second such instance in MP; recently, another IAS officer had made offensive remark on Brahmin daughters.

Madhya Pradesh cadre IAS officer Meenakshi Singh causes outrage with her casteist remarks | X

New Delhi: It is the need of the hour today to be “jaativaadi”, a Madhya Pradesh cadre IAS officer, Meenakshi Singh, has purportedly said in an address to a large gathering in Bhopal. A video of the comment has now gone viral on social media.

In the video, Singh, a promoted IAS officer from the Madhya Pradesh state services, says, “Hum logon ko keval humare sangathan tak nahi, humare samaj tak jaana hoga aur samaj ko jodne ke liye sabse pehli dori humara parivar hai. Humare bachchon ko batana padega hum Adivasi hain, hum SC samuday se hain, humari jaati kya hai. Jaatigat pehchan aur jaativaadi hona aaj kal ke samay ki sabse badi maang hai (We cannot limit ourselves only to our organisation; we have to reach out to society. And to connect society, the very first link is our family. We must tell our children who we are—we are Adivasis, we belong to the SC community, what our caste is. Asserting caste identity and being caste-conscious has become the biggest demand of the present time).”

“Aap dekhte honge savarna samaj ka surname dekh-dekh ke log unka pakshwad karte hain—yeh jaativad, yeh jaativaadi mansikta humare liye zaruri hai (You must have seen how, in ‘upper caste’ society, people favour others simply by looking at their surnames—this is casteism, this caste-conscious mentality is necessary for us),” the 2013 batch officer says referring to the organisation Anusuchit Jati and Janjati Adhikari Evam Karmachari Sangh (AJJAKS) at a conference at Ambedkar Park in Bhopal. “Hum log apne logon ko dhoondhe aur apne logon ko madad karein (We must identify our own people and help our own people),” she adds.

The video has gone viral on social media, with several upper-caste groups terming her speech as casteist and unbecoming of an IAS officer. President of the Akhil Bharatiya Brahmin Samaj Pushpendra Mishra has called on Chief Minister Mohan Yadav to take strict action against officers like Singh for showing “caste bias”.

ThePrint called Singh, but her daughter said the officer had just undergone a surgery, and was unavailable for a comment.

Incidentally, IAS officer Santosh Verma, who recently kicked up a storm in Madhya Pradesh for his remark involving Brahmin daughters, is the State President of the AJJAKS. Last month, a huge row erupted when Verma said, “Reservation should be given to only one person in a family until a Brahmin donates his daughter to my son or has a relationship with her.”

The MP government had issued a show-cause notice to Verma for the comments, stating that they amounted to “indiscipline, arbitrariness, and serious misconduct”. Last week, the General Administration Department (GAD) initiated a series of administrative and disciplinary steps against Verma and removed him from his post of Deputy Secretary in the Agriculture Department. Verma is also a promoted officer of the state services.

An investigation by the state government found that a fake promotion order was prepared to facilitate Verma’s elevation from the State Administrative Service to the IAS, a senior IAS officer of the MP government said on condition of anonymity.

(Edited by Viny Mishra)