But her remark has only fueled the row, with the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) claiming that Congress president Rahul Gandhi had assigned the task of "covering up the misdeeds of Technical Education Minister Charanjit Singh Channi" to Ms Kumari.
Ms Kumari had made the remark to reporters on the sidelines of a Congress demonstration against the recent shake-up in the CBI. "Sending a message does not become a case of MeToo," she said. "Sexual harassment is different from messaging."
She also said that the party did not receive any complaint against Mr Channi, and Chief Minister Amarinder Singh has already expressed his views on the matter.
SAD president Sukhbir Singh Badal expressed shock over the remark. "It is shameful that a woman is belittling a fellow woman on the orders of Rahul Gandhi with a mind-boggling statement that text messages do not constitute sexual harassment," he said.
The Chief Minister had recently said that he has asked the minister to apologise to the official, and maintained that that the matter has been resolved to her satisfaction. The minister, for his part, said that he had sent the text to the woman "by mistake".
"When the Chief Minister has acknowledged the Minister's guilt, how can Kumari give him a clean chit?" Mr Badal asked, adding that she has belittled the MeToo movement "that seeks to expose and punish people like Channi".
Recalling how the Congress had demanded Union Minister MJ Akbar's resignation over sexual harassment allegations, the SAD president wondered why Mr Gandhi was adopting "double standards" on the issue. "Is Rahul silent about this criminal act because the minister is his blue-eyed boy?" he asked.
Even as the party leadership is waiting for the Chief Minister to return from his private visit to Turkey, a senior party functionary said the selective leak of the two-month issue had resulted in media trial, despite the woman IAS officer not coming forward to file a written complaint.
Following media reports on the name of the minister figuring in the case, the party leadership is doing a discreet inquiry into the whole issue. The allegations levelled by the woman officer and other related facts are being probed before briefing the top leadership on the issue. “Without doubting the contents of the complaint, one thing is sure that the selective leakage has been timed to politically finish the minister as he does not owe allegiance to the Chief Minister’s camp,” said the leader.
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