New Delhi: Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Kamal Nath on Sunday said the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) had fielded Malegaon blasts accused Pragya Singh Thakur in Bhopal to polarise the election.
Thakur, who is contesting against Congress veteran Digvijaya Singh, has courted several controversies with her statements and have been issued two notices by the Election Commission for violating the Model Code of Conduct.
Soon after her candidature was announced from Bhopal, she had said that Mumbai Anti-terror Squad chief Hemant Karkare died during the 26/11 Mumbai attacks as she “cursed” him for torturing her. Thakur had also said that she was among those who had razed the Babri mosque.
On Thursday, she called Singh aatanki (terrorist), though a day later, she denied making the statement. “Uma Didi had defeated him 16 years ago and a sanyasin is here again to defeat this aatanki (terrorist),” Thakur said at a rally in Sehore.
The Election Commission took suo motu cognizance and sought a report from the District Returning Officer on Thakur’s speech.
Taking a dig at the Congress, she had also said that the grand old party branded sadhu-sants as terrorists and sent them to jail.
The BJP top brass, including former Madhya Pradesh chief minister Shivraj Singh, has asked her to practice refrain in her speeches.
The party's lone Muslim candidate in last year's Madhya Pradesh Assembly polls, Fatima Rasool Siddique, has even announced that she would not campaign for Thakur, whose comments she found “communal and obnoxious”.
Meanwhile, Nath, who needs to get elected to the Assembly since he took over as the chief minister in December and is in the fray from Chhindwara, also took at a dig at election-related expenses of the BJP leadership. Nath’s son Nakul is the Congress’ Lok Sabha candidate from Chhindwara.
He said, “I want to ask Modiii, the money spent on his plane rides, on MP assembly election, money that is being spent on ongoing Lok Sabha elections, from where do they get the money? Are the wives of BJP leaders selling their jewellery to bear the expenses of elections?”
Nath has been targeting the ruling party and its leadership since the income tax department conducted raids on his close aides and reportedly recovered huge sums of unaccounted money.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi has recently stated that the law was the same for every citizen in the country and even the PM’s house could be raided if any wrongdoing was suspected.
Modi, while addressing an election rally in Madhya Pradesh, said neither Congress president Rahul Gandhi nor his courtiers, like Nath, would be spared as far as corruption was concerned.
Raids have been conducted on leaders of opposition parties and their aides at several places across the countries.
Nath has termed the raids an attempt by those in power to browbeat those in the Opposition. Madhya Pradesh’s former chief minister Digvijaya Singh, too, alleged has that constitutional organisations were working as the sister concerns of the ruling BJP.
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