Gurugram: What is common among Archita Sarangi, Yashaswinee Raje Singh, Dibisa Mahanta, and now, Mohit Chaudhary? Like the three others, Mohit extended support to Gen Z protesters at the height of the protest at Delhi’s Jantar Mantar.
In revealing this, Mohit, the son of Bhiwani-Mahendragarh BJP MP Chaudhary Dharambir, is the latest in a series of BJP and NDA leaders’ children who stepped out from their parents’ shadow to engage with the protests over the NEET-UG paper leak.
Mohit, in a video, said that he went to Jantar Mantar wearing a cap and a mask. He did not want to be recognised as the son of a sitting BJP MP.
Archita, daughter of Bhubaneswar BJP MP Aparajita Sarangi, had posted messages in support of the students. Dibisa, daughter of Asom Gana Parishad (AGP) minister Keshab Mahanta, was seen on the streets of Guwahati, holding placards against the government. Yashaswinee, daughter of former BJP MLA Vikram Singh from Uttar Pradesh, had joined the protests at Jantar Mantar.
Mohit’s case, though, has come with the most detail about his Jantar Mantar visit to reporters in Hansi on Wednesday.
A video is viral in which the Dharm Sena Yuva Morcha national president says anything good for the country deserves support. The NEET paper had leaked, and the youths had their concerns, he says.
But at the same time, he also credits the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and Prime Minister Narendra Modi for acting against the paper leak and holding a fresh, fee-free NEET exam.
Mohit confirmed to ThePrint that he had gone to the protest site and explained his reasons.
“Jantar Mantar is a little more than one kilometre from our Delhi residence. When the protests were on and the roads were being blocked, our own school-going children were facing hardship. As the son of a BJP MP, it was my duty to see the reality of the protests and bring this to my father’s notice, so that he could take up the issue with his party leaders since the Parliament session was on,” he said over the phone.
He said the first-hand knowledge mattered beyond that moment too. He added that he often canvasses for votes in his father’s constituency, and needed to be able to answer if constituents raised questions about the protests.
“Had I gone without hiding my identity, things could have turned bad once the protesters knew that I am a BJP MP’s son,” he explained.
His impression of the protests was mixed, he said. Some had good intentions, he said, but others were, in his words, just ‘gaalibaaz’ — there to hurl abuse rather than press any genuine demand. He said he relayed what he saw to his father, who heard him out and he believed his father must have taken the matter up with the senior party colleagues.
BJP state spokesperson Sanjay Sharma defended Mohit’s visit when contacted by The Print on his phone.
Mohit, he said, had not taken part in the protests as an activist. “There is nothing wrong in a BJP leader’s son or daughter, or any other sympathiser of the party, visiting Jantar Mantar during protests with a good intention of getting a sense of what is going on there.”
Earlier, Haryana state unit chief Archana Gupta had gone so far as to call some of the protesters as ‘terrorists’, only to clarify that she had never made such a remark.
(Edited by Tony Rai)
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