(Reuters) -
Three Indian politicians from a morally conservative party, including a women's
affairs minister, resigned on Wednesday after being caught watching pornography
on a mobile phone during a session of state parliament.
News
channels broadcast footage showing Karnataka state Minister for Cooperation
Laxman Savadi sharing a porn clip with his colleague C.C. Patil, the minister
for women and child development, while sitting in the state assembly.
The owner
of the phone, state Minister for Ports, Science and Technology Krishna Palemar,
also quit.
"We
are requesting the honorable Speaker of the House to conduct an inquiry and
we'll come out with a clean chit," Patil said, denying that they were
deliberately looking at porn.
The three
men 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 riling 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," Renuka
Chowdhary, a former federal minister for women's development and a member of
the Congress Party.
"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, honor killings and
human trafficking.
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Krishna Palemar, Laxman
Savadi & C C Patil accused of
watching pornography in assembly
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