‘Rajasthan Has Always Been a Man’s State’: Congress Minister’s Comment on Rape

Instead of taking objection to state cabinet minister Shanti Dhariwal’s comments, the MLAs sitting behind him could be heard laughing in response.

New Delhi: Rajasthan Congress minister Shanti Kumar Dhariwal triggered a row with his blasé comment about rapes in the state in response to a question in assembly on Wednesday, March 9, news agency ANI reported.

Dhariwal was, at the time, addressing a sparse assembly because the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MLAs of the house had walked out before the remark was made, objecting to Dhariwal’s claims that Uttar Pradesh’s Varanasi, the seat from which Prime Minister Modi was elected to the Lok Sabha, is the most unsafe city for women.

Responding to a question during a debate on grants to police and jail departments, Dhariwal, the minister for law and legal affairs in chief minister Ashok Gehlot’s cabinet, began: “Rape ke mamle mein hum number ek me hain; iss mein koi doh raai nahi.” (We (Rajasthan) are number one in rape; there’s no two ways about it.)

After a member of the assembly mutters something intelligibly, Dhariwal turns to him and says, “Rajasthan to mardon ka pradesh raha hai yaar, iska hum kya karein?” (Rajasthan has been a man’s state, what can we do about it?), causing some of the MLAs to laugh.

No MLA seated in the assembly at the time took objection to Dhariwal’s remarks during the session. 

Later in the day, Rajasthan BJP president Satish Poonia sought Dhariwal’s resignation for the “shameless” way in which he acknowledged that the state leads in the number of rapes, calling it an insult to the “dignity” of both women and men, the Indian Express reported. Even here, however, Poonia did not object to Dhariwal’s controversial remark.

Citing data from the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) in 2020, the Express report notes that Rajasthan leads, in absolute terms,  in the number of FIRs registered for rape that year with 5,310 such FIRs. 

Uttar Pradesh stood at a distant second with 2,769 FIRs registered; a figure made more worrying considering that Uttar Pradesh’s population (19,95,81,477, according to the 2011 census) is far greater than that of Rajasthan (1,21,01,93,422).

Rajasthan officials claim that cases of not just rape but crimes in general shot up after the Gehlot government came to power in 2018 due to stricter enforcement measures, including the mandatory registration of FIRs, implemented in 2019.

Also read: Is Crime Rising In Rajasthan?

Rajasthan stands fifth in crimes against women, calculated not in absolute terms but per lakh of population. For crimes against women under the Indian Penal Code (IPC) as well as special and local laws (SLL), Rajasthan saw 90.5 cases registered per lakh population, preceded by Assam (154.3), Odisha (112.9), Telangana (95.4) and Haryana (94.7); all of which have smaller populations than Rajasthan.

The national average for crimes against women stands at  56.5 per lakh population.