Congress seeks action against Pragya Thakur for ‘terrorist’ remark

Bhopal: Congress on Thursday announced it would move the Election Commission (EC) demanding action against the BJP’s nominee for Bhopal Lok Sabha constituency, Sadhvi Pragya Thakur, for calling the decade-long-rule of Digvijay Singh in Madhya Pradesh (1993-2003) a ‘terrorist regime’.

A Congress spokesman here said the party was peeved at the portrayal of the erstwhile government as a terrorist regime and decided to take the matter to the EC for action against her.

“She hurls wild allegations against Mr Singh. She needs to restrain herself. We are going to lodge a complaint against her with EC seeking strong action against her. Her terrorism jibe violated the model code of conduct”, the spokesman said.

Thakur while addressing an election meeting in the district headquarters of Sehore on Thursday described the former government as a callous and an insensitive one since the shifting of factories from the region arbitrarily during the period had rendered thousands of employees jobless.

“Sixteen years ago, a sadhvi (saint) Uma Bharti had ousted Digvijay Singh from power. Now, another sadhvi (referring to herself) is going to end his political career,” she had said.

Ms Bharti, now a Union minister, had led BJP to power in MP in 2003.

Assembly elections in MP by dislodging the Digvijay Singh government. Union minister Narendra Singh Tomar, however, defended Thakur saying that Mr Singh had addressed terrorists like Osama Bin Laden as ‘Laden ji’ and Masood Azhar as ‘Masood ji’ to pursue vote-bank politics.