Jaipur/Kolkata, Aug 17:
The BJP on Sunday stepped up its attack over the alleged insult to the national song ‘Vande Mataram’ during the Independence Day programme at the Congress headquarters, with Union Home Minister Amit Shah demanding that Sonia Gandhi apologise to the nation and revered author Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay for the “sin”.
Sumitro Chatterjee, a BJP MLA and a direct descendant of Bankim Chandra, wrote to Gandhi, the Congress Parliamentary Party chairperson, demanding an “unconditional apology over the alleged repeated attempts to stop the singing of the full version” of Vande Mataram at the AICC headquarters on Saturday.
Local BJP leaders also lodged a complaint against Gandhi at Urva police station in Karnataka’s Mangaluru. Police told PTI that they have called for legal advice on the matter and no FIR has been filed.
The Congress, which has refuted the allegations, claimed that Shah and the BJP were trying to divert attention from real issues and “the colossal failures of his and his Sahib’s”.
The BJP alleged that the “opposition” to Vande Mataram by Rahul Gandhi and Sonia Gandhi points towards a mindset of a “dimagi Naxal ecosystem”.
Shah alleged that the Congress had forgotten ‘Vande Mataram’ due to vote-bank politics, while West Bengal Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari said the incident had deeply offended people in his state, where Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay is revered as “Sahitya Samrat”.