Ahmedabad, June 13: The Gujarat government refused to admit that it was a faux pas to use a picture of Muslim girls of an Azamgarh college in its advertisements, which it placed in Patna newspapers on Thursday before Chief Minister Narendra Modi’s visit there for the BJP national meet.
State Health Minister and government spokesperson Jay Narayan Vyas said the picture was used only “symbolically” to show how Muslim women in Gujarat are progressing.
As the US-based news portal, www.twocircles.net, which owned that photograph, has said that it was considering suing Gujarat government for copyright violations, Vyas said the government would deal with the matter legally.
He alleged that the issue is being debated by “anti-BJP propaganda machines” to divert people’s attention from the Bhopal tragedy and the Anderson issue that has created a crisis within and outside the Congress.
Asked why the government chose to insert ads in Bihar newspapers when the issues discussed in them pertained to Gujarat, he said the message had to go out across the nation because Muslims in Gujarat were faring better than in any other state. He said the state government would have released the ads in newspapers of any other state if the BJP meet was being held there.
About the other ad showing Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar holding Modi’s hand (the ad has reportedly provoked Nitish Kumar to threaten legal action against those responsible for it) Vyas said it was put out by some people of Bihar origin and settled in Surat. He said the state government has nothing to do with it.
Meanwhile, the man who had organised the placing of the second ad, Vijay Paliwal, a Surat-based textile broker and processing plant owner, told that he is convinced that he did no wrong.
“Gujarat is a progressive state and so is Bihar. I thought the meeting of the CMs of two progressive states was a good sign and so put the ad,” he said. Paliwal said he had come to Gujarat from Bihar many years ago and was touched by Modi’s gesture to send flood relief to Bihar. He said he was not connected to any political party.
-Agencies