The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party has yet again landed into a fix with their attempts of excluding India’s first Prime Minister and a prominent figure in India’s freedom struggle Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru.
A row erupted over the ruling BJP Karnataka’s first-page advertisement in a prominent newspaper that excluded the former PM’s name from a list of freedom fighters of India’s Independence. However, the BJP seems to be divided over the issue.
Reacting strongly to Karnataka Congress’s allegation of ignoring the country’s first Prime Minister Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru in the list of freedom fighters, BJP Karnataka reportedly stated that they had not excluded the veteran Congressman from the advertisement.
On its official Twitter page, BJP Karnataka circled Nehru’s sketch present on top of the list along with several other sketches adding, “Did the Congress forget Nehru’s face so quickly or is it cleverly blind?”
However, N Ravikumar, BJP’s state general secretary, had a contradicting statement in regards to the advertisement. Speaking to reporters on Sunday, he accepted Nehru’s deletion and further blamed him for the partition.
Earlier in the day, the state government released an advertisement in a prominent newspaper featuring freedom fighters.
However, Twitter soon broke into a frenzy calling out the Bommai government for ignoring Nehru’s name and adding the founder of the Hindutva organisation ‘Hindu Mahasabha’ Vinayak Damodar Savarkar to the list.
Many Congress leaders condemned the act and blamed the ruling party for trying to distort history.
