Politicians should not discriminate between great men: Advani

Dismayed over Congress MPs not attending a programme to pay floral tributes to Jana Sangh founder Syama Prasad Mookerjee in Parliament, BJP leader LK Advani today said politicians should not discriminate on party lines between great men of the nation.

Dismayed over Congress MPs not attending a programme to pay floral tributes to Jana Sangh founder Syama Prasad Mookerjee in Parliament, BJP leader LK Advani on Saturday said politicians should not discriminate on party lines between great men of the nation.

Senior-BJP-leader-Lal-Krishna-Advani-attends-a-conference-in-New-Delhi-Sonu-Mehta-HT

Congress MPs, Speaker Meira Kumar and vice-president Hamid Ansari were conspicuous by their absence from a programme organised in Central Hall of Parliament to pay floral tributes to Mookerjee on his birth anniversary on Saturday.

Noting this, Advani said at the BJP headquarters later, "The great men of the nation should not be discriminated on party lines.... In the Central Hall, when we gathered to pay floral tributes to Mookherjee, I did not see anybody from the Congress. I noticed that they had not come."

Advani, along with leader of the Opposition in Lok Sabha Sushma Swaraj and her Rajya Sabha counterpart Arun Jaitley, paid tributes to Mookherjee in Parliament.

Deputy Speaker Karia Munda, Janata Party president Subramanian Swamy, BJP leaders SS Ahluwalia and Rajendra Agarwal were among those present. The Lok Sabha Speaker usually makes it a point to attend such functions.

He recalled that when the portrait of freedom fighter Veer Savarkar was put in Parliament, the Congress leaders had openly announced their opposition to it and boycotted the programme even though the President of India attended.