National

Congress sees BJP-BSP nexus

NEW DELHI: The Congress on Saturday alleged a nexus between the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Bahujan Samaj Party in the way Varun Gandhi was allowed to surrender with fanfare in Pilibhit earlier in the day.

Congress general secretary in charge of Uttar Pradesh Digvijay Singh said if the administration was serious enough not to allow Mr. Gandhi to make a spectacle of his surrender, then it could have picked him up at midnight.

Referring to his own stint as Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister, Mr. Singh recalled how he had picked up Sadhvi Rithambara once in the dead of night anticipating that she would make trouble. “That the BSP government allowed Mr. Gandhi to take out such a procession makes it evident that this is a coordinated act of the two parties.”

Ever since Mr. Gandhi’s controversial remarks against minorities hit the headlines, the Congress has been maintaining that this was part of a bigger game plan of the BJP to communalise this election.

Union Minister Kapil Sibal said that Mr. Gandhi was only an actor doing the bidding of his director, Leader of the Opposition L.K. Advani. Others in the Congress maintained that every time the BJP faced dismal prospects at the polls, it sought to communalise and thereby polarise the polity.

Confident that this would only boomerang on the BJP, Congress leaders likened the latest attempt to communalise the polls to BJP’s effort to draw political mileage from Mumbai terror attacks.

Chairman of the Congress media department M. Veerappa Moily dismissed the latest turn in the Varun’s chapter as nothing but a “drama” best ignored.

Reacting to Mr. Sibal’s observations, BJP spokesman Prakash Javadekar said the party candidate had respected the law by surrendering in Pilibhit.

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