Mumbai: The state unit of the Congress on Saturday alleged that the way the Bharatiya Jamata Party (BJP) was supporting Sadhvi Pragya Singh Thakur, an accused in the 2008 Malegaon bomb blast, it could be inferred that the party would have offered candidature to Nathuram Godse, had he been alive.
Congress spokesperson and general secretary of the state, Sachin Sawant, claimed that fielding Ms Thakur from Bhopal proved that the BJP stealthily supported terrorism and that is how it worked.
“Help provided to Thakur in the court, and almost no action against Sanatan show BJP’s ideology. By the same token, if Nathuram Godse was alive, the BJP would have given him candidature. In future, BJP will give candidature to the killers of Dr Narendra Dabholkar, Govind Pansare, M.M. Kalburgi and Gauri Lankesh too,” he said.
Earlier, the Congress and the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) had demanded that Ms Thakur be sacked from the BJP.
The Opposition had also sought an apology from Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Amid this, the BJP leadership distanced itself from Ms Thakur’s statement, in which she claimed that former ATS chief Hemant Karkare died due to her curse, saying that it was her personal statement.
Mr Sawant said, “This is not just the humiliation of one martyr Mr Karkare, but of the whole nation. After uproar from all over the country, Ms Thakur has apologised. The BJP is trying to save itself by saying it is her personal opinion. But the BJP will not get salvation without the removal of Ms Thakur from the party and an apology from the PM.”
Mr Sawant pointed out that Ms Thakur had earlier called Mr Karkare a traitor.
BJP’s star campaigners and Prime Minister Narendra Modi and chief minister Devendra Fadnavis, who were asking for votes in the name of the soldiers’ sacrifice, did not feel the need to apologise to the nation.
“BJP was shamelessly supporting the candidature of a person accused of terrorism,” he said.
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