Giriraj Singh interview: ‘The issue of Kashi, Mathura and Ayodhya is the demand of the Sanatanis of India, which Congress deliberately delayed’

Union minister and BJP leader Giriraj Singh is again contesting from his Begusarai Lok Sabha constituency, which will go to polls in the fourth phase on May 13. Giriraj, who had trounced the then CPI’s nominee Kanhaiya Kumar in the 2019 polls, is now taking on the CPI’s INDIA bloc candidate Awadesh Kumar Rai. In an interview with The Indian Express, he speaks on a range of issues including the induction of turncoats into the BJP and the fish row between PM Narendra Modi and the Opposition leaders. Excerpts:

Q) PM Modi’s attack on Tejshwi Yadav for posting a video of his eating fish during Navratri — Tejashwi says he did so before Navratri – has drawn fire from TMC, with CM Mamata Banerjee and Abhishek Banerjee saying that the BJP has a problem with fish being a part of the diet and even religious rituals of Bengalis and would erase diversity in the country. Your comments?

Mamata Banerjee and Abhishek Banerjee are nervous. They are frustrated. They don’t know that in India language and water change as per regional variations. In North India, the cultures of Bihar, UP, Rajasthan, etc, are different from Bengal or Tamil Nadu. In Bengal, fish-eating is part of the culture of the masses, but in Bihar, to which Tejashwi Yadav belongs, fish isn’t eaten as part of religious ritual.

Q) You have recently said how will the Opposition give jobs if it opposes the Agniveer scheme. But critics of Agniveer say that it hires young people only for four years following which it retains only 25% of them while asking others to leave with just a lump sump.

What is Agniveer? You should interview the young people who are associating themselves with the scheme. In Agniveer, if one person is required in the Army, they appoint five. For four or five