Union Ayush Ministry has lodged criminal complaint in the Kotla Mubarakpur police station in South Delhi in the backdrop of an RTI query that had claimed the Ministry does not recruit Muslims as a matter of policy.
The complaint was lodged with the Delhi Police. It said RTI reply purportedly given by the Ministry was fake. The complaint said that the RTI query and reply “fabricated and mischievous” attempt to malign them.
The Ministry reportedly asked police to investigate the matter as that was serious in nature and also to find out people behind the malicious campaign aimed at harming the reputation of the Union Government. The Ministry in its complaint had refuted the allegations in this regard.
Sources said that the Ministry has asked the Delhi Police to investigate “how a fake RTI reply was circulated and who was behind the act”. The complaint further stated, “Certain mischievous misinformation being spread in certain section of media and social media quoting a reply to an RTI by mentioning a fabricated draft as Annexure I to that letter, which has never been issued by the Ministry of Ayush or any of its agencies.”
It may be noted that the fake RTI reply was published in a newspaper and requested police to take further action for “propagating false and malicious” information.
A police officer said they were conducting a preliminary inquiry into the matter and would register an FIR once the facts are established.
After the Ministry faced the ire over the alleged RTI reply, they called the reply as “a fabricated and mischievous”. The Ministry’s has issued a statement saying they strongly condemns this piece of misreporting, clearly aimed at causing chasm between different sections of society and promoting disharmony and mistrust with ulterior motives.
The Ministry statement was in response to an article in the Milli Gazette newspaper that cited a response to several RTI applications about how many Muslim yoga teachers had been hired for overseas assignments for World Yoga Day last June.
“As per the Government policy, no Muslim candidate was invited, selected or sent abroad,” was the Ministry’s RTI reply, according to the newspaper article. According to the article, the RTI also said 3841 Muslim candidates applied for the post of Yoga trainer/teacher with the Ministry until October 2015 but none of them was selected.
The Ayush Ministry was formed to promote ayurveda, yoga, naturopathy, unani, siddha and homeopathy.