Truth out in the open, says BJP

Taking a dig at the Congress, which was left embarrassed after articles critical of first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru and party president Sonia Gandhi appeared in its mouthpiece, the BJP on Monday claimed that the “truth” which the Opposition party had been hiding has come out. Attacking the editor of the journal, former MP Sanjay Nirupam, the ruling party wondered whether Mr Nirupam had done a “copy-and-paste” work by lifting some article he might have written for the Shiv Sena mouthpiece Saamana earlier. Mr Nirupam was in the Sena before he joined the Congress.

Senior BJP leader and Union minister Prakash Javadekar “congratulated” Mr Nirupam and quipped that he was known for such write-ups when he was the editor of the Hindi edition of Sena mouthpiece Dopahar Ka Saamana.

“The Congress journal, which is named Congress Darshan, should be called Satyarth Darshan (Sight of Truth). It is significant that it has come on the 131st foundation day of the party. Sardar Patel had the maximum support in Congress to become the Prime Minister but Gandhiji proposed Nehru and kept Patel at bay... Patel merged 562 provinces into India and Nehru was in charge of only Kashmir and it remains a problem. Patel had warned about China’s betrayal on Tibet... This is not the BJP or Javadekar saying so but the mouthpiece of the Congress. What the Congress had been hiding has come out,” Mr Javadekar said.

Referring to the second of the two articles in the journal, Mr Javadekar claimed the Congress has also “confessed” that Mrs Gandhi’s father was with “fascist forces” and that she did not become an Indian citizen for long after marriage and was then made party president in 62 days after enrolling as its member. The ruling party demanded a clarification on the issue from the Congress as well as its president.

“Congress mouthpiece would never write about Patel. And now when it has written, it has written only the truth,” the Union minister said. He claimed leaders outside the Nehru-Gandhi family, like P.V. Narasimha Rao, Lal Bahadur Shastri, besides Patel, never got “justice” from it, a party of “one family”.

As the Congress sacked the content editor of the journal, BJP secretary Shrikant Sharma said it showed the party’s “intolerance against truth” as most of what had appeared was a “matter of fact”.