Kids used as oxen; Minister says story planted by TV

Heart-rending images of children labouring in a field in Vaishali caused uproar in the Bihar Assembly on Monday.

After NDTV played out footage of a farm that belongs to the family of Union Minister for Rural Development Raghuvansh Prasad Singh, NDA MLAs on Monday sought for his resignation.

The minister's brother had told NDTV on Sunday that he was using the children because the fields were too slippery for bullocks. But the minister himself has now alleged that it's a conspiracy and that the media asked the children to pose for the video.

''The urge to get photographed is natural. Even the elders want to get photographed. So villagers too wanted to get photographed. They had gone to film waterlogging and said do it this way. There were boys who did as tutored and they filmed this,'' said Raghuvansh Prasad Singh, Union minister for Rural Development.

The children though had told NDTV that they were working on the fields because that's the only way they could fight starvation.

''We work to survive. Our feet and arms hurt, but we still have to carry on working,'' said Sonelal Kumar, Child Labourer.

Courtesy:ndtv.com
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