Modi's act stumps unflappable Hanumantha Rao

NEW DELHI: V Hanumantha Rao, the Congress member of Rajya Sabha from Telangana, is not the type who gets fazed easily. Each session of Parliament since BJP's victory in 2014 polls, has seen the burly Rajiv Gandhi loyalist playing the storm-trooper for his party, attracting resentment of opponents and often to the annoyance and ire of the Chair.
The on-going confrontation has seen Rao, who as the convenor of the Forum of OBC MPs felicitated Modi in the last session for being the first "backward" to have occupied the top office on his own steam, moving with a placard demanding resignations of BJP leaders facing corruption charges.
On Thursday, however, Prime Minister Narendra Modi left the usually unflappable Rao flummoxed. Modi, who was moving around as part of his outreach to the opposition, approached Rao who stood with a placard demanding the resignation of Madhya Pradesh CM Shivraj Singh Chouhan for the Vyapam scam. "So you will not even spare even an OBC person?" Modi jokingly asked Rao, in a reference to Chouhan, an OBC.
The poser turned out to be quite a googly for Rao who had, while leading a delegation of OBC MPs from all parties to PM, asked Modi to put an end to the "discrimination" that backwards, he maintains, continues to face. The meeting saw Rao and other "backward" MPs, including Modi's own ministers, raise non-implementation of quota for OBCs and the absence of a separate ministry exclusively devoted to safeguarding their interests.