Seeking to end the controversy surrounding police action against former deputy speaker and poet Vishnu Wagh over his controversial anthology Sudhir Sukta, a senior BJP official on Tuesday said that the ruling party expressed regret about the FIR filed against the former BJP MlA.
Speaking to The Pioneer, vice-president of the Bharatiya Janata Party in Goa, Anil Hoble said, the FIR against Wagh had led to unrest with the State unit of the party.
“There is a restlessness in the party over the issue, that a poet and a former BJP MlA who has sufferred two heart attacks is now being treated like this and harassed," Hoble said.
"The Chief Minister has assured us that the case will be closed after seeking expert opinion on the subject... The language used by Wagh is the same used by a common man, it was wrong to file an FIR against him," Hoble also said.
The controversial book, which was incidentally released at the hands of Manohar Parrikar, during his earlier stint as Chief Minister in 2013, is critical of the Gaud Saraswat Brahmin community, which is influential in the sphere of business, administration as well as politics in the State.
The book did not stir controversy after it was released in 2013, but the controversy started after 'Sudhir Sukta' was shortlisted for an annual literary award by the State-funded Goa Konkani Academy this year. The selection of 'Sudhir Sukta' was objected to by one of the jury members, tasked with short-listing books for the award, who claimed that the contents in the book were inflammatory and unfairly critical of the GSB community and derogatory to women.
The awards where however scrapped by the State Government last week, ostensibly because of "irregularities" in the award short-listing process.
The scrapping of the awards, as well as the FIR against him, which was filed by a women's rights' organisation alleging obscenity in the book's content against women, had resulted in a lot of ridicule of the ruling BJP-led coalition Government, with a section of the State's intelligentsia accusing the Government of trying to harass Wagh, who has been laid up and immobile following a heart attack, second in two years.
“Wagh is currently bedridden and therefore should not be targeted. After heart attacks his condition is that of a child. He cannot speak and move. Such action against him was wrong," Hoble said.
"We, as the BJP completely stand with Wagh. The party has no objection to the contents of the book," Hoble said.