Congress leader Sandeep Dikshit on Tuesday condemned Mahesh Sharma's remark on writers returning their Sahitya Akademi awards and alleged that the Culture Minister has become uncultured.
Dikshit said it is extremely unfortunate that the country's Culture Minister has no brains.
"I can understand that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) keeps people supporting their own ideology, but that person should have some thought or some brain. These people are like the common man. Nowadays, the Culture Minister has become so uncultured, this has never happened in the history of the country," he added.
Sharma, however, today said that he has been misquoted by a leading English daily over his opinion on the ongoing crisis in the Sahitya Akademi and added that he was only against the 'platform' which the writers had chosen to show their protest.
"These writers are the pride and glory of our country. They have made the nation proud with their achievements but I want to appeal to them that the platform that they have chosen to voice their protest is wrong. Law and order is a matter of the state and should not be meddled with," Sharma told ANI here.
He asserted that the Centre fully supported the writers' cause for protest and condemned the killing of noted author M.M Kalburgi, but said that returning the awards bestowed upon them was not the correct approach.
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Sharma also said that the writers should channel their anger towards a platform where their cause will actually be heard and suggested them to write to the state government or Chief Minister.
The Culture Minister was slammed for saying earlier that 'if they (writers) say they are unable to write, let them first stop writing. We will then see'.