Cutting across party lines, members in Lok Sabha on Monday highlighted the cases of atrocities being committed on Dalits in various parts of the country and demanded steps to prevent them.
Chirag Paswan (Lok Janshakti Party) drew the attention of the House towards atrocities against two Dalit youths who were allegedly thrashed and urinated upon in Bihar's Muzaffarpur district.
Alleging that a series of incidents of atrocities against Dalits in Darbhanga and Kishanganj had happened as state government did not act against such crimes, Paswan demanded CBI investigation into the cases.
He said there were 20 crore dalits in the country, but very few people were willing to come to their rescue at times of crisis.
Pappu Yadav (Rashtriya Janata Dal) accused the Uttar Pradesh government of trying to create a rift between different castes.
Meenakshi Lekhi (Bharatiya Janata Party) said there have been a lot of politics over atrocities on dalits and said no castiest remarks should be made, while claiming that in South India, casteist words were still being used. "Usage of such words should be stopped and attacks on dalits should not be politicised," Lekhi said.
M Ramchandran (Congress) raised the issue of the arrest of two sisters on an alleged complaint of a CPI-M worker in Kerala and claimed that, as they were daughters of a Dalit leader, they were harassed by the police at the instance of the Left activists. His remarks drew loud protests from Left members present in the House.
The incident of alleged racial harassment of a Manipuri woman by an immigration officer was raised by Thokchom Meinya (Cong).
He said the people from North East faced such attitude even 70 years after independence, which reflected the failure of nation building.
North East does not find mention in National Anthem and text books do not teach history of that region, Meinya said as he demanded a strong anti-racial law in India.
Questioning Prime Minister Narendra Modi's "silence" on the issue of atrocities on Dalits, BSP chief Mayawati alleged that such incidents have increased since the BJP came into power and demanded a statement from him.
Referring the Una incident in Gujarat where Dalit youths were allegedly flogged by a cow protection group on July 22, she said outside Parliament, "Dalit people are being tortured in the name of cow protection."
In an apparent reference to the suicide of Mangaluru DySP M K Ganapathy, Mayawati said the atrocities against Dalits and marginalised people "have gone up and even those in the government are committing suicide."
"Similarly in Maharashtra, two Dalit youths were going on a bike and they overtook a vehicle. Overtaking happens generally on the roads. But they were stopped and tortured.
When the photo of Baba saheb (B R Ambedkar) was found on the bike they were tortured more. BJP is in power in Maharashtra.
"In Uttar Pradesh, atrocities against Dalit are going on a bigger scale. It is happening all over the country after BJP came to power at the Centre," she alleged.
With next year's UP assembly elections on her mind, Mayawati has been targeting the Centre over the incidents of atrocities on Dalits and her attacks have sharpened after a BJP leader made derogatory remarks against her pushing the saffron party on backfoot.
"When it is happening on regular basis across the country, Prime Minister Narendra Modi should not keep silence. He should speak. In BJP ruled states, it is happening in a bigger scale. But Prime Minister is silent.
"It seems that he has no concern over the incidents. We were expecting that Prime Minister would definitely say something on Gujarat incident but he did not. He is yet to give any statement on the incident," she added.
