Ramdev gets a taste of his own medicine

Camps banned at many places, cases registered

After Lucknow, yoga guru Ramdev’s proposed camp in Amethi, the Lok Sabha constituency of Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi, too has been banned.

According to official sources in Lucknow, the camp was scheduled to be held on April 30, but the district administration refused to allow it citing Ramdev’s “anti-Dalit” remarks in Lucknow recently. The yoga guru’s Lucknow camp had earlier been banned by the administration.

He has also been banned from conducting programmes in Himachal Pradesh and booked in Maharashtra and Rajasthan under SC/ST Act 

The request of Patanjali Yoga Peeth of Baba Ramdev to hold yoga camps at Kangra, Chamba and Rehan in Himachal Pradesh was denied on Monday.

Ramdev had earlier been booked for alleged “anti-Dalit” remarks, made while addressing a press conference on Friday. He had allegedly said Rahul Gandhi visited houses of Dalits for “honeymoon” and “picnic”.

Terming the ban on his yoga camps as undemocratic, Ramdev alleged that the government had pressured the Election Commission to put curbs and accused the Congress of “distorting” his remarks against Rahul, for vote-bank politics.

“We got relief in such cases from the Gujarat and Karnataka governments, and hope to get similar relief in Himachal too,” said Ramdev, who was in Kangra to attend the camp on Monday.

Fresh cases have been registered against Ramdev under the Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribes Atrocities Act by Panchpaoli police in Nagpur after a number of Dalit organisations, including the Maharashtra Pradesh Congress Committee (MPCC) Schedule Caste Cell and city Corporator Sandeep Sahare, along with Bhimsena, the NCP, the Youth Congress, the AAP and the Triratna Bodi Foundation protested.

Also, an NCP delegation led by Ajay Patil had lodged a complaint against Ramdev at the Sadar police station in the city, but no offence was registered there.