FILE: MSME Minister Giriraj Singh addressing at the launch of the Scheme for Promoting Innovation, Entrepreneurship and Agro Industry, in New Delhi on March 18, 2015. (Source: pib.nic.in) FILE: MSME Minister Giriraj Singh addressing at the launch of the Scheme for Promoting Innovation, Entrepreneurship and Agro Industry, in New Delhi on March 18, 2015. (Source: pib.nic.in)

Despite the Prime Minister’s calls to ignore such statements, Union minister Giriraj Singh has not let go of beef politics – he raised it again at Bihar Sharif on Sunday.

Singh was speaking ahead of PM Narendra Modi’s arrival at the venue. “I am someone who follows a Sanatan Dharma. If I have to leave my minister post, I will – but Nitish Kumar will have to answer – if he forms government, will Bihar’s Hindus have to eat cow meat?”

Cow slaughter is already banned in Bihar with a 1955 Act.

Singh attacked Lalu Prasad for saying that those who eat mutton also eat beef. The minister then came up with a scenario whereby someone offers beef to the destitute outside Patna’s Hanuman temple: “They will leave if you offer them beef….because they will not forget their culture.”

Singh, who began his speech by exhorting the crowd to make themselves heard in Italy, said that Lalu Prasad had taken the beef issue from “Delhi-Dadri” when he ran out of issues.

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