GUWAHATI: Former Assam Congress President and Rajya Sabha member Ripun Bora released a list on Wednesday to claim that 54 politicians, including father, son, daughter and grandson, belonging to the BJP are active in politics and yet the saffron party accuses the Congress of doing dynastic politics.
Bora said that there are many BJP MPs and MLAs in the Parliament and in the state assemblies whose kin are members of the legislative bodies, hence the party (BJP) has no moral right to malign the Congress, particularly the Gandhi family, over dynastic politics.
“Defence Minister Rajnath Singh’s son Pankaj Singh is a member of Uttar Pradesh Assembly. Union ministers Anurag Thakur, Piyush Goyal and Dharmendra Pradhan’s fathers were either former Chief Ministers or Central ministers,” the Congress leader said, giving names of 23 other such instances in the current Lok Sabha and in different states.
He said: “The Congress has never maligned the BJP on this issue as it believes in democracy and merit. Targeting the Gandhi family, the BJP, especially Prime Minister Narendra Modi, has been slamming the Congress for having done ‘nothing’ for the country but ‘enjoying’ the power.”
Rejecting the BJP’s ‘propaganda’, Bora said that since Independence and till now, only six out of the 14 Prime Ministers of the country — Jawaharlal Nehru, Lal Bahadur Sashtri, Indira Gandhi, Rajiv Gandhi, P.V. Narasimha Rao and Manmohan Singh — were from the Congress.
The other eight PMs — Morarji Desai, Chaudhary Charan Singh, Viswanath Pratap Singh, Chandrasekhar, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, H.D. Deve Gowda, Indra Kumar Gujral and Narendra Modi — belonged to other parties.
Among the six Congress PMs, only three came from the Gandhi family, he said, as he asked what is the reason for the BJP to hide such historical facts and attack the Gandhi family at all times?
The Congress leader said that Jawaharlal Nehru had dedicated all the land and other properties inherited from his father Motilal Nehru in the service of the nation.
Stating that late Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was killed by terrorists while she was the PM, he said that Rajiv Gandhi had also sacrificed his life for the unity and integrity of India when he was targeted by terrorists.
“In 2004, when the Congress got a majority of seats in the Lok Sabha, Sonia Gandhi was urged to assume the prime ministership but she declined and handed over the baton to Manmohan Singh.
“During the 10 years of Singh’s prime ministership, Rahul Gandhi could have easily become a central minister of his choice,” the Assam Congress leader said. .
Source: IANS
