In a move that was clearly in defense of Rajya Sabha member Jyotiraditya Scindia, who along with his supporters have been dubbed as ‘traitors’ by the Madhya Pradesh Congress for leaving the party, Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan on Saturday asked whether luminaries like Motilal Nehru and Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose, who had left the Congress, were also traitors.
The chief minister’s statements came at a function held in Phoolbag ground of Gwalior to induct former Congress leaders and workers into the BJP. Chouhan did not stop at senior Nehru or Netaji but also listed out names like J.P. Narayan Chaudhary Charan Singh, Babu Jagjivan Ram, Jagannath Mishra, Mamata Banerjee and Narayan Dutt Tiwari, who had left the Congress to form new parties or merge back to the Congress, to ask whether these leaders also should be termed traitors.
Later, the MP unit of the BJP came out with a series of memes on Twitter listing out the leaders who left the Congress and also added ex-prime minister Indira Gandhi and ex-finance minister P. Chidambaram to the list.
Chouhan’s questions on traitors came in the presence of Scindia who is on a three-day visit to Gwalior-Chambal for the first time since he quit the Congress. More than 5,000 former Congress workers joined the BJP on the occasion. Minister Pradyumna Singh Tomar, a Scindia confidante, presented a list of the workers joining the saffron outfit to party state president V.D. Sharma.
Chouhan said that it was Kamal Nath and the Congress who betrayed and back-stabbed the people of Madhya Pradesh by seeking votes in the name of Scindia and then becoming the chief minister and failing to keep the electoral promises.
Speaking earlier, Scindia said that the Congress was engaged in all kinds of corruption during its 15-month tenure and had even made corruption an 'etiquette’. He said that there were two chief ministers during the Congress rule—one in front and one behind the veil. He also said that Kamal Nath had locked down the state secretariat for common people, meaning the government was totally inaccessible.
On his supporters joining the BJP, Scindia said now they are an army of Shivraj and will work for victory of the party in the Gwalior-Chambal area.
Meanwhile, the MP Congress attacked CM Chouhan and BJP for listing out names like Motilal Nehru and Netaji Bose in the context of betrayal. Party spokesman in-charge of Gwalior-Chambal region, K.K. Mishra said that a chief minister making such “unauthenticated statements” about Motilal Nehru and Netaji and their actions was an insult to the entire freedom struggle.
“I ask BJP president J.P. Nadda whether the disgusting statements made by Chouhan are party’s opinion or the personal statements of the CM. If a representative of an ideology that even made money by being informers to the British during the freedom struggle asks such questions about the freedom movement, it is simply an example of the low-level of his thought,” Mishra said.
Vice-president of Congress media cell, Bhupendra Gupta asked whether Motilal Nehru or Netaji Bose or any other big leaders left the Congress to become ministers. “It is clear who are the traitors and who sold out. They will be always traitors and registered in history that way,” Gupta said.
Congress protest against Scindia
Earlier, Congress workers staged a demonstration and raised slogans against Scindia and his supporters, calling them traitors and asking him to go back. A huge number of workers gathered near the BJP programme venue with flags and posters. They were later rounded up by the police.
