Works and Trans­port Min­is­ter Ro­han Sinanan has ex­pressed con­fi­dence in Prime Min­is­ter Stu­art Young’s re­sponse to re­cent ac­cu­sa­tions of bul­ly­ing.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia on Wednes­day night at the Lax­mi Narayan Tem­ple in Freeport, where he at­tend­ed a cul­tur­al per­for­mance by a vis­it­ing troupe from Ra­jasthan, In­dia, Sinanan avoid­ed di­rect com­ment on the mat­ter.

As the head of the PNM’s na­tion­al elec­tion cam­paign, he said, “I wouldn’t want to com­ment on that. The Prime Min­is­ter has al­ready ad­dressed it. I will say this: be­hind every sto­ry, there’s the re­al sto­ry, but I’ll leave that to the PM.”

Young re­cent­ly ad­dressed al­le­ga­tions about a bul­ly­ing in­ci­dent that oc­curred when he was a stu­dent at St Mary’s Col­lege 33 years ago. He de­scribed the in­ci­dent as “deeply un­for­tu­nate” and stressed that he has “no in­ten­tion of min­imis­ing any­one’s feel­ings.” He al­so reaf­firmed his com­mit­ment to tack­ling bul­ly­ing in schools.

Re­gard­ing his own po­lit­i­cal fu­ture, Sinanan said his re­turn to the Sen­ate de­pends on the Prime Min­is­ter’s dis­cre­tion. He al­so con­firmed that the PNM is pre­pared to con­test all 41 con­stituen­cies in the up­com­ing elec­tions and re­mains op­ti­mistic.

At the cul­tur­al event, Sinanan praised the vis­it­ing per­form­ers and com­mend­ed the In­di­an gov­ern­ment for its long­stand­ing sup­port of T&T. He high­light­ed an ini­tia­tive where 1,000 na­tion­als will re­ceive free pros­thet­ic limbs from In­dia lat­er this month. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, he not­ed that three em­ploy­ees from his min­istry are cur­rent­ly un­der­go­ing ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence train­ing in In­dia.

The folk dance and mu­sic group, led by Ra­jku­mari Rathore, de­liv­ered breath­tak­ing per­for­mances of tra­di­tion­al dances such as Bhavai, Chakri, and Kachchi Gho­di. These in­tri­cate rou­tines re­quire years of ded­i­cat­ed prac­tice.

Dancers Bhawai and Babunath Ji per­formed five out­stand­ing pieces, earn­ing sev­er­al stand­ing ova­tions from Sinanan and the packed au­di­ence at the free event.