Says police won’t mind
BHOPAL : State panchayat and rural development minister Gopal Bhargava has been organising mass marriage ceremonies for long but every time he makes some or the other innovation, which make the events a topic of discussion.
Bhargava gifted ‘mogris’ (a small flat piece of wood used to beat clothes while washing them) to the brides at the mass marriage ceremony organised on Akshay Tritiya on Saturday. The ‘mogris’ carry anti-liquor slogans. While gifting the mogris, the minister told the brides that those would come in handy for them in case their husbands turned drunkards and started ruining their family life. “If your husband comes home drunk, first try to reason with him and if he does not fall in line, use this,” he said. He also asked them to use the ‘mogris’ against sellers of illicit liquor.
The mogris, emblazoned with slogans like ‘For thrashing drunkards’ and ‘Police won’t mind’, were the centre of attraction at the function where 700 couples tied the knot.
About three years back, Bhargava’s son and daughter were married in a mass marriage ceremony. Bhargava has been grabbing headlines by hiring chopper to shower flower petals on the couples in mass marriages, arranging dance of Bednis and printing invitation cards comparing the mass marriages with the wedding of Aishwarya Rai and Abhishek Bachchan.
CM’s call triggers race
Ever since the chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan, while addressing the party’s state executive meeting, has urged the ministers to ensure that the BJP gets the benefit of Kanyadan and Nikah schemes, a race has begun among the party leaders for organising mass marriage ceremonies. They are hoping to earn the chief minister’s goodwill, besides political mileage for themselves. Besides ministers Umashankar Gupta, Rampal Singh and Gaurishankar Bisen, MLAs Rameshwar Sharma and Neena Verma have organised mass marriage ceremonies. Others are also in the queue. Rameshwar Sharma has even announced that the BJP leader who arranges 100 couples for mass marriage ceremony will be made the party’s candidate for corporator’s post in the next BMC polls.
12 child marriages prevented on Akshaya Tritiya
BHOPAL: On the auspicious day Akshaya Tritiya, women and child development department prevented more than 12 child marriages on Saturday. The department is running campaign against child marriage since April 1 in the state. Women empowerment commissioner Jaishree Kiyawat said to prevent child marriages, the workers of the department were asking date of birth certificate and also cross verifying the age by seeing the bride or the groom. In every mass marriage functions the workers are visiting the venue and ask to submit the age certificate or the mark sheet. The workers have asked the people, involved in marriages like band party, horse providers, caterers, DJs and others to inform them if they saw any child marriage. On Akshaya Tritiya it was known to the department that people may try to get their child married hiding the age. The alert department workers and flying squad raided various marriage venues and checked the date of birth of the bride and groom. The workers prevented child marriages in Khandwa, Raisen, Seoni, Rajgarh, Dewas, Harda, Sagar and other districts on Saturday. In these places the parents were conducting marriage ceremony at temples or at little isolated places, but the workers reached the spots and prevented the marriages. From April 1, around 300 child marriages were prevented by the workers. The campaign will not stop until the marriage dates are over.
