Kedar Kashyap, Chhattisgarh Cabinet Minister and a senior Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader, allegedly assaulted and verbally abused a staff member of a government-owned house in Jagdalpur over a minor issue on Saturday evening (September 6, 2025.)
The incident has sparked a sharp reaction from the Opposition Congress party that has sought a public apology from the BJP for one of its Ministers assaulting an employee and using slurs “related to mother and sister.” Mr. Kashyap has denied the allegations.
Khitendra Pandey, a 36-year-old Class IV employee who has been working at the Jagdalpur circuit house in Bastar district for the past two decades, has submitted a police complaint stating that the Minister thrashed him after accusing him of not unlocking one of the rooms meant for accommodation. He claimed that he had no knowledge of either the occupancy or the lock status of the room for which he was allegedly attacked.
“I was preparing snacks for the Minister when a PSO (Personal Security Officer) told me that Mr. Kashyap was calling me. So I went where he was and when I went there, Kedar Kashyap abused me using a cuss word related to my mother and picked up a shoe. He then held me by the collar and assaulted me brutally. He slapped me a few times with a lot of force and said that you don’t open the room. I had no knowledge about the room and later found that three rooms were open,” said Mr. Pandey.
Mr. Kashyap is the only Minister from the Bastar region in the Vishnu Deo Sai Cabinet and holds portfolios such as Forest and Climate Change, Transport, Cooperation, Parliamentary Affairs. He represents the Narayanpur constituency in the Chhattisgarh Assembly.
In a post on X, former Chief Minister and senior Congress leader Bhupesh Baghel extrapolated the purported incident to the political row that had erupted in poll-bound Bihar after a video of a youth abusing Mr. Modi and his mother at an Opposition’s Vote Adhikar Yatra went viral on social media.
“Are only Prime Minister Narendra Modi Ji’s mother a mother, or are all mothers also mothers? Now, the BJP has to answer this question. Kedar Kashyap is a senior Minister from Chhattisgarh. In Jagdalpur, Bastar, he abused an employee with mother-sister slurs and also grabbed him by the collar and beat him. The BJP should at least take the resignation of the Minister who gave mother slurs,” he wrote.
Seeking an apology from the BJP, he also took a dig at Mr. Modi’s emotional response to the Bihar video. “It would be good if they apologize while crying, but if the tears have dried up, it will do even without crying. @narendramodi,” he wrote.
The Congress meanwhile, has demanded legal action on Mr. Kashyap and also sought his ouster from the Cabinet. “The party will stage a Statewide demonstration on Sunday (September 7, 2025),” it announced. Denying these allegations, Mr. Kashyap said the Congress was spreading lies as it had no issues left.
“Insulting our God-like workers is intolerable for me under any circumstances. Congress is issueless. The only work left for Congress is to spread misleading propaganda. The kind of incident that is being talked about has not happened at all,” he wrote on his WhatsApp group for journalists. The Hindu made repeated attempts to call him for a reaction but the calls went unanswered.
Published – September 07, 2025 01:23 pm IST
