Siwan (Bihar), Oct 31 (PTI) Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath on Friday charged Congress’ Prime Minister Jawahar Lal Nehru with having “insulted” Rajendra Prasad, the country’s first President, by asking him not to attend the inauguration of a renovated Somnath temple.
The senior BJP leader made the remark while addressing an election rally in Siwan district of Bihar, which was the birthplace of Prasad.
“The Congress has been rejected by the people of Bihar because it has insulted stalwarts like Sardar Vallabh Bhai Patel, Babasaheb Ambedkar, Rajendra Prasad and Karpoori Thakur. Even the party’s own former president Sitaram Kesri, who belonged to this state, was humiliated,” Adityanath alleged.
He also claimed that when “Rajendra babu decided to attend the inauguration ceremony of the Somnath temple in Gujarat, Congress’ Prime Minister Nehru told him that he must not go there”.
“But for Rajendra babu, it was a matter of faith, and he said he would choose to give up his post rather than not attending the function,” the Uttar Pradesh chief minister said at the rally.
The BJP leader also alleged that the Congress and its Bihar ally RJD have always been “disrespectful towards our heritage”, and cited the “stopping of Lord Ram’s chariot”, an obvious reference to the arrest of BJP patriarch Lal Krishna Advani while he was taking out the Ram Rath Yatra decades ago.
Yogi also pointed out that an affidavit filed in the Supreme Court, by the Centre when Congress-led UPA was in power, had said that there was “no evidence of the existence of Lord Ram”.
“But the BJP and the NDA have always given pride of place to our heritage. We fulfilled the promise that the temple of Ram would be built at the intended spot in Ayodhya (mandir wahin banayenge – the place where the disputed structure called Babri Masjid formerly existed)”, Adityanath said.
He also said that if the NDA retained power in Bihar, “mafia will be finished, just like in UP, where they are deprived of their ill-gotten properties and many of them have been sent to hell”.
Notably, the Yogi Adityanath administration has been known to raze the properties of criminals, which has earned the religious leader-turned-politician the sobriquet “bulldozer baba”, and over the past few years, a number of dreaded gangsters have been killed in police encounters. PTI NAC BDC
This report is auto-generated from PTI news service. ThePrint holds no responsibility for its content.