Others Got 2 Laddus, He Got 1. Then He Dialled Chief Minister's Helpline

A villager in Madhya Pradesh's Bhind district dialled the Chief Minister's Helpline with an unusual grievance - he received only one laddu instead of two.

The incident took place during the Independence Day celebrations at the Gram Panchayat Bhawan. After the flag-hoisting ceremony, laddus were being distributed among all attendees. When villager Kamlesh Khushwaha's turn came, he was was offered one piece of the sweet.

When his demand for two pieces of sweets was refused, he called the CM Helpline from outside the Panchayat building to register his protest. In his complaint, Mr Khushwaha wrote that the Panchayat had failed to distribute sweets properly after flag-hoisting, and the matter needed to be addressed.

Panchayat Secretary Ravindra Srivastava later confirmed the sequence of events. "The villager was standing on the road outside. The peon gave him one laddu, but he insisted on two. When refused, he called the CM helpline," he told NDTV.

In an unusual attempt at damage control, the Panchayat has decided to purchase one kilogram of sweets from the market and apologise to the complainant to pacify him.

In January 2020, a villager in the district had complained about a faulty hand pump on the CM Helpline. Then Executive Engineer of the Public Health Engineering (PHE) department PR Goyal wrote in a reply to the complaint, "The complainant is mad, he has epileptic seizures. His entire family has epilepsy. The hand pump is not faulty, his mind is. The entire PHE department knows that this man even tore the clothes of our mechanic. The time has come to wage a Chinese war, which is a guerilla policy. The hand pump will be uprooted and buried in the chest of the complainant."

The official's remarks caused an uproar, after which a notice was issued to the Superintendent Engineer. Later, he clarified that his ID had been misused.