Legislators in India's western state of Gujarat allegedly watched porn during assembly, in the second sleaze scandal to hit the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in recent months, officials said Wednesday. Shankar Choudhary and Jetha Dharwad, both members of the BJP, which rules at state level, watched obscene clips on a tablet computer during a state assembly, local newspaper journalist Janakbhai Purohit said. Purohit shot a video of the lawmakers looking at porn and lodged a complaint with assembly Speaker Ganpat Vasava.
"They started looking at vulgar photographs of girls, I realised that this was wrong. I had no option but to inform the speaker's office," Purohit said. Choudhary said the accusation was "a baseless and fabricated allegation just to defame us. No such incident took place."
The controversy comes weeks after three BJP ministers in the southern state of Karnataka were forced to resign after a similar scene. The right-wing Hindu party has been accused of moral policing in some of the states it governs. Hindu vigilante groups linked with the party have assaulted women drinking at bars for violating traditional values. Manish Tewari, spokesman of the Indian National Congress which leads the federal government, slammed the BJP. "If elected legislators continue to defile the temples of democracy, then people will lose faith in them," he said.
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