Congress MPs as also the lok Sabha Speaker Meira Kumar and Rajya Sabha Chairman Hamid Ansari remained conspicuous by their absence from a programme organised in the Central Hall of Parliament to pay floral tributes to Jana Sangh founder Dr Syama Prasad Mookerjee on his birth anniversary on Saturday.
The absence of Congress MPs struck BJP veteran lK Advani, who, later at the BJP headquarters, said if their absence was by design, then it is sad.
“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 Mookerjee, I did not see anybody from the Congress. I noticed that they had not come,” he said.
“I did not know that this could be the attitude of the Congress. If this was by mistake then Congress should make amends. But if this was by design then it is sad,” Advani said.
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.
In 2003, even as the then President APJ Abdul Kalam unveiled freedom fighter Vinayak Damodar Savarkar’s portrait in the Central Hall, Congress president Sonia Gandhi, who was then leader of the Opposition in the lok Sabha, had boycotted the function.
Senior BJP leader lK Advani, leader of Opposition in the lok Sabha Sushma Swaraj and her Rajya Sabha counterpart Arun Jaitley, Deputy Speaker Karia Munda, Janata Party president Subramanian Swamy and BJP leaders SS Ahluwalia were among those who paid their tributes.
Apparently seeking to showcase the difference in attitudes, Advani cited how Mookerjee and Bhim Rao Ambedkar were inducted by then Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru into his Cabinet at Mahatma Gandhi’s behest even though the two leaders had been critical of the Congress in the past and did not belong to that party.
“Gandhi had given this suggestion to Nehru that those services the Congress were deprived of but who have the talent and the ability should be inducted into his Cabinet. Gandhi suggested two names,” Advani said.
He maintained that Gandhi felt Mookerjee and Ambedkar could contribute in a big way to bringing the country out of the challenges and problems it was facing at the time of independence.
