Home Min Shinde's top 5 'did he really say that?' quotes

Moneycontrol Bureau

Union Home Minister Sushil Kumar Shinde created a furore when he equated the protestors of the Delhi gang rape incident to Maoists. When asked by CNN-IBN why he had not met the protestors, Shinde replied: "Tomorrow if any other party's demonstration goes on why should not the Home Minister go there. Tomorrow Congress and BJP will demonstrate, tomorrow Maoists will come here to demonstrate with weapons."

This is not the first time that the Home Minister has stirred a hornet’s nest with his comments.

Following are some of the controversial remarks/gaffes made by Shinde in the last few months.

*"Such controversies (coal blocks allotment) come and go. Earlier, there was the controversy regarding Bofors, but it faded away. No one remembers the petrol pump allotment issue today,” Shinde said on the sidelines of a press conference in September.

*"This is a serious matter. This is not the subject of a film," Sushil Kumar Shinde snapped at Rajya Sabha member and former actress Jaya Bachchan, while responding to a debate on the issue of violence in Assam. He later had to apologise for the remark.

*Shinde referred to Mumbai terror attacks key conspirator Hafiz Saeed in Parliament as ‘Mr’ Hafiz Saeed and ‘Shri’ Hafiz Saeed while answering a query.

*In September, Replying to a question on statehood for Telangana at his maiden press conference as Home Minister, Shinde linked it to Maoist menace. He said that Jharkhand and Chattisgarh, carved out from Bihar and Madhya Pradesh, were small in size and the Naxal problem had increased there.

*At the same press conference, he said that India's economic growth was "good" and "increasing". This when India’s quarterly GDP growth had been steadily declining.