Watching porn costs politicians their posts

Published on Thursday 9 February 2012 01:26

Three Indian politicians from a morally conservative party, including a women’s affairs minister, have resigned after being caught watching pornography on a mobile phone during a session of state parliament.

News channels broadcast footage showing Karnataka’s minister for co-operation, Laxman Savadi, sharing a pornographic clip with colleague CC Patil, the minister for women and child development, while sitting in the state assembly.

The phone’s owner, ports, science and technology minister Krishna Palemar, also resigned.

“We are requesting the honourable Speaker of the House to conduct an inquiry and we’ll come out with a clean chit,” Mr Patil said.

He denied that the three were deliberately looking at pornography.

The three ministers said they did not want to cause any embarrassment for their party, the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which rules the state and is in opposition at a national level.

There has been outrage over the incident not just from rights activists and right-wing Hindu groups in conservative India, but also from the ruling Congress Party, which called for the assembly to be dissolved.

“We live in a country where there already is this social mindset that women are disposable commodities and are seen as transferable properties,” said Renuka Chowdhary, a former federal minister for women’s development and a Congress Party member.

“It really is troubling that the people who are in positions of power and have the responsibility to change things actually have the same mindset and are busy watching porn,” she told the CNN-IBN news channel.

Girls and women in largely patriarchal India face a barrage of threats, including rape, dowry-related murder, forced marriage, domestic violence, honour killings and human trafficking, as well as sexual harrassment, known as “Eve teasing”.