JMM leader Kunal Sarang, 33, represents Baharagora in the Jharkhand assembly.
A lawmaker in Jharkhand who apparently tried to use sarcasm to take potshots at the government for launching state-run liquor vends has landed in a bit of a soup. The ruling BJP has taken Jharkhand Mukti Morcha, or JMM, lawmaker Kunal Sarangi to task for demanding that the government should open a liquor shop in the assembly complex too so that lawmakers do not have to queue up elsewhere.
Jharkhand's labour minister Raj Paliwal suggested he wasn't surprised because JMM leaders "could do anything", urban development minister CP Singh castigated the young lawmaker for unabashedly making an outrageous demand while the Congress has called the demand a conspiracy to defame Jharkhand.
The demand, first made last week, was meant as a takedown of the Raghubar Das government's new excise policy that gave state-run firms the right to sell liquor, ostensibly to raise revenue from liquor sales.
Some JMM lawmakers had earlier, inspired by neighbouring Bihar prohibition policy, had demanded a ban on sale of liquor in the state. But the demand had been rejected by the BJP government.
No one gets satire it seems, rued the 33-year-old Baharagora lawmaker who followed his father's footsteps into politics after picking up an engineering degree from Jamshedpur's National Institute of Technology and a masters from England's Lancaster University.
On social media, Mr Sarangi argued that the government could save more than thrice the Rs 1,500 crore earned from liquor sales if it ensured government projects are completed on time.
If revenue was the only motivation, he wondered why the government wasn't opening casinos too "in line with their government in Maharashtra and Goa".