A post is being widely shared on social media claiming that the UP Government has ordered to count the arms licenses held by Brahmins in the state. Let’s verify the claim made in the post.
Claim: UP Government has ordered to count the arms licenses held by the Brahmins in the state
Fact: On August 2020, BJP MLA Devmani Dwivedi sent a note to UP Assembly Principal Secretary Pradeep Dubey seeking information on security plans for Brahmins in the state. Regarding this, the Home Department sent a letter to the district magistrates on 18 August 2020 to send the data on the number of arms licenses issued to Brahmins. However, this request was retracted shortly later. Hence the claim made in the post is MISLEADING.
We searched the internet with relevant keywords and found reports by Indian Express, BBC, and Aaj Tak on 31 August 2020.
As per the reports, on 16 August 2020, Devmani Dwivedi, a BJP member of the legislative assembly from Sultanpur, sent a note to Uttar Pradesh Vidhan Sabha Principal Secretary Pradeep Dubey, seeking information on: How many Brahmins have been killed in the present regime? How many killers have been arrested? What are the security plans for Brahmins? Will the government provide them with weapon licenses on priority?
Following this, the State Home Department sent a letter to the District Magistrates on 18 August 2020 and sought details of the same. “How many Brahmins applied for arms licenses and how many were issued,” the letter read – “Please provide this information pointwise with supplementary material by August 21, 2020, on e-mail.” When ‘Indian Express‘ contacted them, Pradeep Dubey said: “We did not seek any such information from the government and no such question was accepted.” Dwivedi replied, “I have no information about it, and I am out of touch”. However, a senior official signalled backtracking by the government and said the details “are no longer being pursued.”
Several opposition leaders had then attacked the Adityanath government for its perceived neglect of the Brahmin community. This gained momentum after the police action against Vikas Dubey, a gangster in Kanpur, and his associates, who were brahmins.
To sum it up, the UP government asked for data on Brahmins with arms licenses in August 2020 but retracted the request immediately after.
