Many missed him on World Laughter Day on May 6, but Tripura chief minister Biplab Deb didn’t keep people waiting for long.

Speaking at a function in Udaipur to mark Rabindranath Tagore’s birth anniversary, the 49-year-old CM told the audience Tagore had returned his Nobel Prize to protest against the British rule in India.

“Rabindranath Tagore had given away his Nobel Prize in protest against the British,” Deb is seen telling his audience in a video being circulated in the social media.

Tagore received the Nobel Prize in 1913 and he did not return it. For one, it wasn’t and isn’t granted by the British government. Deb had apparently confused the Nobel with Tagore’s rejection of knighthood in protest against the Jalianwalla Bagh massacre in 1919.

Deb, and because him Tripura, have become known internationally due to his frequent gaffes.

– Before his mistaken praise for Tagore on his birth anniversary, Deb had similarly extolled Buddha on his jayanti, saying Buddha had walked across India and went to countries like Japan, Myanmar and Tibet on foot to spread the message of peace and harmony.

Buddha hadn’t travelled to these countries during his lifetime and Buddhism spread to these places much later through his followers.

– One was a relatively minor blooper in comparison when, in a video that went viral, he was heard saying that nails of his government’s critics should be pulled out.

Comparing his government to a bottle gourd that gets rotten due to repeated digging of nails, Biplab said that he will not allow this to happen with his government. “If someone pierces or interferes, his nails should be pulled out. No one can touch my government,” Biplab is heard saying in the video.

– The Tripura CM, who regards Prime Minister Narendra Modi his political guru, lived up to this claim when, like the PM’s ‘sell pakodas’ remark, he advised the jobless youth of his state, to set up paan shops and milk cows instead of chasing government jobs and looking to the government for employment opportunities.

“Why run after netas for government jobs? Graduates should get cows and milk it to earn Rs 10 lakh in 10 years. Instead of running after political parties, had the same youth set up a paan shop, he would have had a bank balance of Rs 5 lakh by now,” Deb had said.

– In another fit, he said that Mechanical Engineers should not go for civil services, but Civil engineers should.

“One should not opt for civil services after studying mechanical engineering. Civil engineers have the experience and knowledge to help build administration and society. Civil engineering gives that kind of knowledge,” media reported him as saying.

– Earlier, speaking at a function on April 17, 2018, Deb had claimed that Internet and satellite communication existed in the days of Mahabharata.

“Internet and satellite communication had existed in the days of Mahabharata. Sanjaya (the charioteer of king Dhritarashtra) using the technology gave a detailed account and description to the blind king about the battle of Kurukshetra,” Deb said while inaugurating a two-day workshop on computerisation of Public Distribution System (PDS).

He further said that Europeans and Americans were wrong in claiming internet as their invention as it was invented by Indians “lakhs of years ago”.

“How could Dhritarashtra see through Sanjay’s eyes? There was technology available at that time… Internet was there, satellite communication was there,” said Deb and stuck to it, despite being made the butt of jokes.

– He also revealed a parochial north Indian mindset, questioning the Miss World title to Diana Hayden years ago. Claiming that the international beauty pageants were a farce as their results were predetermined, he said Indian beauty was exemplified by Aishwarya Rai rather than Diana.

“Indian beauty should ideally look like Goddesses Lakshmi and Saraswati. Diana Hayden did not deserve to win the Miss World crown. Actually, it was part of a fixed plan which was hatched keeping in mind the interests of the international market. Aishwarya Rai’s victory was well deserved as she represents the quintessential Indian woman,” he was reported to have said.

He later apologised for his remarks.

To those curious about the man, Deb was born on November 25, 1969 in a middle class family in Tripura’s Gomati district, in a village called Rajdhar Nagar. His father Hirudhan Deb was a local leader of the Jan Sangh, the BJP’s previous avatar.

Biplab Deb graduated from Tripura’s Udaipur College in 1999 – at the age of 30 – and left for Delhi soon after to join the RSS, where he was a volunteer for 16 years, training under prominent leaders Govindacharya and Krishnagopal Sharma.

He replaced Sudhindra Dasgupta, the longest-serving BJP chief in Tripura, in January 2016.

Deb has clarified that he is not a former gym instructor, as media reports had suggested. “During a television interview, I said I used to visit the gym to exercise, but now I do not get any time to exercise. I am surprised how the media reported that I was once a gym instructor,” Biplab Deb told news agency Press Trust of India.