Madhya Pradesh Home Minister Babulal Gaur fuelled another controversy with his remarks that drinking liquor is a "fundamental right" and that it is a status symbol too.

The 85-year-old Gaur made the remarks while asserting that crime rate doesn't go up by consuming alcohol. "Alcohol does not increase crime. People lose their consciousness after consuming alcohol and that's how it causes crime. The person who drinks within control does not cause crime," he said, adding," one should not overdrink. It is one's fundamental right. Drinking is a social status symbol these days".

The controversy-prone minister was asked by reporters here yesterday for his reaction to extending the timing for sale of alcohol in Bhopal from 10 pm to 11.30 pm. Gaur had previously said that sexual crime in Chennai is low as women wear "full clothes".

"Women in Tamil Nadu wear full clothes and hence the crime rate is lower there as compared to other states," he said after a visit to Chennai. He was also at the centre of a controversy when he recalled at an event on how he had once told the wife of a Russian leader that he can teach her how to untie a dhoti.

"I told her I can't teach you how to wear it, but I can certainly teach you how to remove it, but that too later, not now," Gaur had said in remarks that angered women right activists. The Minister had also described rape as a social crime, saying "sometimes it's right, sometimes it's wrong". He also insisted that governments could not ensure that women do not get raped, triggering angry reactions from the Congress.