Minister slammed for clicking ‘drought selfie’

Days after Maharashtra’s Agriculture Minister Eknath Khadse was slammed for using 10,000 litres of water for a helicopter landing, another BJP Minister has come under fire for clicking a ‘drought selfie’.

Maharashtra’s Rural Development and Water Conservation Minister Pankaja Munde was on a visit to Latur to monitor the district’s drought situation. During her visit, she clicked a selfie near the dried up Manjara river and shared it on her social media account.

Selfie with trench of said barrage Manjara .. one relief to latur .. pic.twitter.com/r49aEVxSSk

— PankajaGopinathMunde (@Pankajamunde) April 17, 2016

Within minutes of sharing the picture, netizens started trolling the Minister for her insensitive behaviour, terming her visit as a ‘disaster tourism’.

Political parties too didn’t leave any stone unturned in a bid to gain some political mileage. On Munde’s visit, Congress claimed “BJP as a whole is a selfie and optics party, this is like making a mockery of the drought”. BJP ally Shiv Sena said, “Unfortunate that a minister went and clicked selfies in drought-hit Latur, avoidable.”

Munde hasn’t publicly responded to allegations concerning the incident till now.