A scuffle was reported to have broken out between BJP and BSP workers on Tuesday after the latter’s mayor elect in Aligarh named Mohammad Furqan and other BSP corporators decided to take their oath in Urdu. This oath taking resulted in objections from the BJP workers which later escalated into a full blown scuffle.
The BJP workers as a result decided to start chanting slogans like Vande Mataram, Har Har Mahadev, Jai Sri Ram and even raised Jai Modi and Jai Yogi slogans. The BSP members responded by starting to chant Jai Bheem. As a result of the sloganeering, the oath taking ceremony had to be put on hold for a while.
Initial reports suggested that only a single BSP corporator named Musharraf Hussain took oath in Urdu but latest reports have claimed that other corporators including the Mayor Mohammad Furqan used the same language to take their oaths.
The allegation of the BJP corporators is that it is illegal to take oath in Urdu.
The District Magistrate of Aligarh, Hrishikesh Bhaskar Yashod decided to downplay the incident by claiming that there was some unnecessary sloganeering but the program later took place peacefully. He though has claimed that they would probe the recordings and take appropriate actions based on it.
In the recently concluded Uttar Pradesh civic polls, the BJP won in 14 out of 16 Municipal corporations across the state. The remaining two namely Meerut and Aligarh were won by the BSP.
A similar scuffle was noticed in the Maharashtra assembly in 2009 after 13 Maharashtra Navanirman Sena (MNS) members flew of the handle after realising that Samajwadi Party’s Abu Azmi was taking his oath in Hindi.
As a result of this hooliganism, four MNS legislators namely, Shishir Shinde, Ramesh Wanjale, Ram Kadam and Vasant Geete were banned from entering the assembly premises for four years.
