Shoe targets Prime Minister

NI Wire

Ahmedabad

Mon, 27 Apr 2009: 

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh became the latest victim of this election season’s lately developed weapon — shoe missile, particularly targeted at politicians, Sunday when a young engineering student hurled shoe at him during an election rally in Ahmedabad.

The shoe though landed far from the ime Minister as the shoe thrower, Hitesh Chauhan, a student of Gandhinagar Institute of Technology and Engineering, was 60-70 feet away from the dais where Manmohan Singh was delivering his election speech.

The difference between such incidents that happened with Manmohan Singh and others who were earlier targeted viz., P Chidambaram, Naveen Jindal and L K Advani is while in the latter’s case the accused had some cause to show their anger, the 21-year-old Hitesh Chauhan did the unsolicited offence only to earn instant fame.

The police who whisked away the notorious guy for questioning him said on Sunday evening that Hitesh did all this out of gaining “cheap publicity”. Hitesh allegedly told the police that attending political rallies was his hobby. He apparently said he wanted the instant fame that a shoe throw brings.

The Congress, however, sees a political connection in the entire episode and had different story to tell. Congress spokesperson Arjun Modhwadia claimed that Hitesh was an activist of ABVP, student-wing of BJP, and had been sent by his political masters.

Senior Congress leader and spokesman Veerappa Moily underscoring the incident took place in the bastion of Narendra Modi, the icon of BJP, said, “People of Gujarat are excellent. But we also have people like Narendra Modi who have led to hate-politics. If Narendra Modi is a gentleman, he has to apologise for what has happened to the prime minister.”

BJP spokesperson Ravi Shankar Prasad has, however, condemned the incident, stating, “BJP condemn it outright. This kind of shoe-throwing does not go with the vein of democracy.”

Like Chidambaram who pardoned Jarnail Singh, a Sikh journalist who had chucked shoe at him, Manmohan Singh let off the accused directing not to lodge FIR against Hitesh Chauhan as he had forgiven the assailant.

Singh is the third world leader who witnessed the shoe-gate incident following former US president George W Bush who was targeted by an Iraqi journalist last year, and Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao who became victim of this February.