The National Commission for Scheduled Castes (NCSC) will soon issue a notice to Aurangabad district magistrate Kanwal Tanuj for his "unsavoury remarks" against women at a public meeting in Jamhor block of the district, while addressing a " swachhta mahasabha" - a programme to spread awareness against open defecation.

NCSC member Yogendra Paswan said on Wednesday that the commission came to know about the district magistrate's statement asking a man belonging to the Mahadalit community to sell his wife if he couldn't afford to build a toilet for her at home.

Terming the district magistrate's statement "highly objectionable", the NCSC member said he would inquire into the incident after coming to Patna.

"I am supposed to visit Patna on Thursday. I will certainly look into the matter," Paswan told The Telegraph over phone from Delhi.

An official with the NCSC office in Delhi said the commission got information about the 2012-batch IAS officer's retort through media reports.

"How can a public servant make such a statement and that too at an official meeting," the NCSC official said, adding that the commission has taken cognisance of the matter on the basis of media reports.

Tanuj flew into a rage after Saukina Dom, a resident of Jamhor Tola in Aurangabad, interrupted the district magistrate requesting him to release the government funds of Rs 12,000 in advance to build a toilet. The DM allegedly told Saukina to "sell his wife" if he could not afford to build a toilet at home.

Saukina, who lost his wife Parvati Devi, about 20 years ago, felt insulted as their were around 500 people in the gathering. "I was deeply hurt. Main pehle kabhi itna apmanit nahi hua (I had never felt so insulted)," he told this newspaper over phone.

Saukina was hurriedly taken from the venue of the meeting by security personnel and reportedly told not to speak to the media. An official, too, visited Saukina's makeshift house the next day and asked him not to go against the district magistrate.

The annual per capita income in Aurangabad's rural areas is Rs 12,302; the DM was in effect asking villagers to set aside a year's earning for a toilet and await reimbursement.

The hamlet Saukina lives in is home to 12 Mahadalit families; they have neither been given houses under central government rural housing schemes nor the state's old-age pensions for senior citizens, Saukina said.