E-Paper
Pragya Thakur’s Godse remark not her first controversial one
As the Opposition questioned how the BJP could endorse a candidate who hailed the Mahatma’s killer, the BJP asked her to apologise.
When Pragya Singh Thakur, then contesting the Bhopal Lok Sabha election against senior Congress leader Digvijaya Singh as the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) candidate, described Mahatma Gandhi’s assassin Nathuram Godse as a patriot in May, the BJP moved to discipline her.
“Nathuram Godse was, is and will be a patriot. Those who called him a terrorist should introspect,’’ Thakur said.
As the Opposition questioned how the BJP could endorse a candidate who hailed the Mahatma’s killer, the BJP asked her to apologise.
Thakur did retract her comment, but the issue did not die down.
Days later, the question was again raised at a media briefing by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Soon after, her case was handed over to a BJP disciplinary committee.
According to one leader HT spoke to, Avinash Khanna and Om Pathak looked into the circumstances of her comments to decide if she deserved further punishment. Ten days after her statement, the two-member disciplinary committee submitted its report to BJP president Amit Shah.
In the aftermath of the landslide win by the BJP and the National Democratic Alliance in the Lok Sabha elections, and Thakur’s own victory in Bhopal, the matter took a back seat.
“We did give our report but I am unable to tell you what it was as it is an internal matter of the party,’’ said Pathak, adding, “I can however say that the party dealt with it appropriately.’’
Her remarks on Godse weren’t her first acquaintance with controversy in the run-up to the elections.In April , she claimed that former Mumbai anti-terrorist squad chief Hemant Karkare had died in the 26/11 Mumbai terrorist attacks because she put a curse on him for the torture she was subjected to in the investigation of the 2008 Malegaon blasts.
