Rajeshwar Shastri Musalgaonkar, a Sanskrit and astrology professor at Ujjain’s Vikram University put up a prediction on his Facebook profile that Prime Minister Modi will return in his second term with BJP getting close to 300 seats and NDA crossing the 300-figure mark. Kamal Nath-led Congress government in Madhya Pradesh suspended him on disciplinary grounds and attached him to another department.
As per reports, on April 28, professor Musalgaonkar had posted on Facebook, “BJP near 300 and NDA across 300” as a prediction for the results of 2019 Lok Sabha Election. Shastri being a government employee, this was considered a violation of the model code of conduct by the university authorities. Shastri heads the department of Sanskrit-Ved-Jyotirvigyan at Vikram University.
As per reports, he says he is apolitical and was responding to a query by one of his students. As a professor of astrology, he was predicting the outcome based on the current political scenario along with the impact of planets on the political parties as a response to a student’s query. The Facebook comment, he claims, was posted by his student without his knowledge. He says that he deleted the post the next day when he became aware of it and even apologised for it.
However, acting on a complaint filed by an Ujjain-based Youth Congress worker, Babloo Khinchi, the district returning officer recommended suspension of Shastri and wrote to the divisional commissioner. He was suspended from May 7 onward and attached to another department. The professor has also now said that he will move the high court challenging the Kamal Nath government’s suspension order.
