Cancel Pragya’s Candidature For Praising Mahatma’s Killer

Hyderabad, May 18: TPCC Treasurer Gudur Narayana Reddy demanded that Election Commission of India should cancel the candidature of BJP leader Pragya Singh Thakur from Bhopal for her remarks praising Mahatma Gandhi’s assasin Nathuram Godse.

Addressing a press conference at Gandhi Bhavan on Saturday, Gudur Narayana Reddy said Pragya Singh‘s remarks calling Nathuram Godse a ‘patriot’ were highly condemnable and completely intolerable. “After God, the most important personality in the lives of all Indians is Mahatma Gandhi. All Indians not only love and respect Gandhiji, but they cannot tolerate any of kind insult for him. How can we forgive a BJP leader who praised the killer of our Father of the Nation? Election Commission of India should take suo motto cognizance of the matter and cancel the candidature of so-called ‘Sadhvi’ Pragya Singh from Bhopal,” he demanded.

Gudur Narayana Reddy said it was highly regrettable that Prime Minister Narender Modi and BJP National president Amit Shah did not take any action against Pragya Singh Thakur and the party confined itself to just condemning the statement. He said Mahatma Gandhi is loved and respect by one and all across the globe. Right from Class I student in India to senior citizens, everyone loves Mahatma Gandhi. However, a few leaders of Sangh Parivar like Pragya Singh and Sambit Patra of BJP, Pooja Pandey of Hindu Mahasabha and a few others try to insult Mahatma Gandhi to get cheap publicity and also to expose their true faces. While Pooja Shakun Pandey enacted the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi, Sambit Patra called PM Modi ‘Father of the Nation’. He said a few others even proposed to construct a temple for Godse. He said those voices are of hatred and division and their existence in the same form was quite dangerous for the survival of democracy and secularism in India.

The Congress leader also slammed BJP, especially PM Modi, for using abusive and derogatory language to address former Prime Ministers including Pandit Nehru. He said Modi stoop down the lowest level when he criticised Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi, the former Prime Ministers who’ve laid down their lives for the country. He said BJP leaders have changed their language and tone in every phase of election. Their tone became more hateful and venomous than the previous one as they started crossing one limit after the other. Since Modi had nothing to speak about his contribution for the country during the last five years, he used hate speeches as fuel for BJP’s campaign. He said famous magazine Time has rightly described him as ‘Divider in Chief’.

Gudur Narayana Reddy said that the joint press conference addressed by PM Modi and Amit Shah appeared like a drama. He said Modi did not answer any of the questions while Amit Shah gave twisted reply to all the queries. He said both Modi and Shah were not clear on what action they would take against Pragya Singh Thakur. He said people would teach a fitting lesson to the BJP leaders for their repeated attempts to insult Mahatma Gandhi.

He also condemned the Telangana BJP leaders for their silence on Pragya Thakur’s comments. He asked as to why State BJP leaders did not condemn Pragya Thakur for insult Mahatma Gandhi. He said the silence of BJP leaders was an endorsement that they support the views of Pragya Thakur.

When asked for comments on Congress party’s expected performance in the Lok Sabha, Gudur Narayana Reddy said that the Congress party has done extremely well in about 9-10 seats in Telangana. He said this time the BJP would not win more than 10 seats in entire South India.