Boris Johnson’s attempt to use his visit to India to celebrate the success of JCB, a Tory-owned digger company, was met with backlash on Thursday over the use of its technique in mass demolition.
The prime minister arrived in India while a fierce dispute raged in Delhi over the demolition of predominantly Muslim settlements in the capital’s area affected by public violence, an issue before the Indian Supreme Court.
Television footage of the demolition dispute, prominently broadcast on Indian channels, shows that JCB bulldozers are being used to level property.
The Amnesty India campaign group tweeted: “Against the backdrop of the Delhi Municipal Corporation, which uses JCB bulldozers to destroy Muslim shops in Jahangirpuri in northwestern Delhi, the opening of a JCB factory in Gujarat by a non-British prime minister but his silence is also deafening. “
Ali Khan Mahmudabad, a historian and activist, wrote: “The British Prime Minister went to a bulldozer factory at a time like this! Talk about optics. Come on! Bulldozers with garlands. Exactly what I needed to see. ”
During a visit to a new JCB factory, Johnson called it a “living, breathing incarnation of the navel between the United Kingdom and India.”
He said: “It is the world’s leading factory – 600,000 diggers a year come from India, exported from India to 110 countries with British technology.
Asked whether he would raise the dispute over the demolition with Narendra Modi when he met with the Indian prime minister on Friday, Johnson said: “We always raise difficult issues, of course we do, but the fact is that India is a country with 1.35 billion people and it is democratic, it is the largest democracy in the world. “
Asked if Johnson had visited the company because its chairman, Anthony Bamford, was a conservative donor, the prime minister’s spokesman said: “No, he chose to go to the JCB factory because it is a very good illustration of business in the UK. India and the Indian government for the benefit of both the United Kingdom and India.
A JCB spokesman declined to comment.
Johnson had hoped to use the two-day trip to India to highlight close economic and security ties between the two countries, but he was repeatedly pressured by Partygate.
Johnson took an Indian military helicopter from Ahmedabad to Gujarat to visit the new factory in Vadodara, where he inspected the work with Lord Bamford.
The Prime Minister has visited JCB’s factories many times, including during the 2019 general election campaign, when he pushed the digger through a wall of polystyrene bricks to demonstrate his determination to “implement Brexit”.
In January 2019, when he was a backbencher, he received a £ 10,000 donation from the company three days before giving a speech at its headquarters praising JCB’s business acumen.
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