On Monday, several media outlets cited Tawadkar, the member of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), as saying that the government will set up centers, similar to Alcoholics Anonymous, to make homosexuals "normal."
"I was misunderstood and misquoted. I was not talking about the LGBT (youths) but about drug addicted and sexually abused youths," Tawadkar was quoted as saying by the India Today newspaper.
Indian journalists, and politicians severely criticized his earlier remarks.
"So the BJP government in Goa thinks LGBT community is abnormal. Contemplating to train and administer medicines to make them normal. Sick," a spokesperson of All India Congress Committee, Priyanka Chaturvedi, tweeted.
So the BJP government in Goa thinks LGBT community is abnormal. Contemplating to train and administer medicines to make them normal. Sick.
— Priyanka Chaturvedi (@priyankac19) 12 января 2015
Barkha Dutt, a journalist, posted to her Twitter account that Tawadkar's "insensitive" way of thinking is the only thing that needs curing.
What needs curing, Dear Goa Minister is not homosexuality, but your anachronistic, insensitive, intolerant way of thinking.
— barkha dutt (@BDUTT) 13 января 2015
Gay sex was declared legal in India in 2009, but in 2013 the Indian Supreme Court reimposed a ban on the practice and once again homosexual relations became a crime.
On Monday, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon denounced criminalization of homosexuality in India, saying that it violates basic human rights to privacy.
