Tamil Nadu minister asks tribal boys to remove his slippers, draws flak

Tamil Nadu Forest Minister Dindigul C Sreenivasan was on Thursday caught in a raging row after he asked two tribal boys to remove his slippers to enter a shrine in Mudumalai in Nilgiris district.

The incident which was caught on camera took place on Thursday morning when Sreenivasan came to Mudumalai to inaugurate a rejuvenation camp for captive elephants in the Mudumalai Tiger Reserve (MTR).

"Hey, come here… come here. Remove the buckle (of slippers), " Sreenivasan is heard shouting at the boys who are children of mahouts. District collector J Innocent Divya and other officials, who were present with the minister, remained silent spectators and did not raise any voice of protest.

Sreenivasan asked the boys to remove his slippers to enter a temple. Later, one of the boys filed a complaint with the police urging them to act against the Minister under the Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989.

This is not the first time the minister is ordering someone to remove his footwear – he had earlier asked a government official to remove his slippers during an event.

As the video went viral on social media and several called out the minister for the “VVIP racism” he displayed through the incident, an unmoved Sreenivasan almost justified asking the boys to remove his slippers.

“I called them to remove my slippers as I thought the boys were like my grandchildren,” Sreenivasan said, even as his colleague D Jayakumar came to his defence saying the minister would have sought the help of the boys due to his age.

Several users posted the video and tagged Chief Minister Edappadi K Palaniswami asking him to remove Sreenivasan from the Cabinet.

“Dindigul Sreenivasan should be ashamed of his actions and must be stripped of from his post. @CMOTamilNadu - you must take this sternly. Demeaning a fellow human is the biggest crime,” Vignesh, a Twitter user, wrote.

Opposition Leader M K Stalin said several ministers in the Cabinet were conducting themselves in contradiction to the oath taken. The minister is known for making controversial statements and had been under attack from several quarters in the past.