“You are allowed to steal,” but not too much – Indian minister tells officials

Shivpal Singh Yadav

Corruption really isn’t such a bad thing , if the words of Indian Minister Shivpal Singh Yadav are anything to go by. The minster while speaking to public officials at a gathering. “If you work hard, and put your heart and soul into it, then you are allowed to steal some,” Shivpal Singh Yadav was caught on a TV news camera saying. “But don’t be a bandit.”
Yadav, a minister in charge of housing and construction in northern Uttar Pradesh state, on Friday sought to do some damage control, blaming the media for taking his comments out of context.

“In that event the media was not allowed in,” he said at a pres conference he called to explain his comments. “I don’t know how they sneaked in. And if they had sneaked in, the whole discussion should have come out in the press, not just part of it.”

“I have taken back those words,” he said. “Why are you raking it up? I don’t know why the media is targeting me.”

The opposition Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) condemned the minister’s statements, saying, “A minister’s statement is like a policy of the government.

“If he says so then the government is offering a license to steal the public money,” local BJP leader Lalji Tandon said. “It is not appropriate for a minister to talk like this.”