Dhumal son in eye of storm
In what smacks of sheer lack of sensitivity, Lok Sabha MP Anurag Thakur was busy celebrating his appointment as Bharatiya Janata Party youth wing chief on Thursday just a few kilometres away from a village in Himachal Pradesh mourning for a young man who died in the Maoist massacre of CRPF jawans on Tuesday.
Mr Thakur, who is the son of state chief minister Prem Kumar Dhumal, was appointed Bhartiya Janata Yuva Morcha (BJYM) chief earlier this week.
On Thursday, he was busy accepting congratulations at a party rally barely four kilometres away from the village in Himachal’s Kangra district which lost one of its young men to the Maoist attack.
Responding to the criticism, party spokesperson Nirmala Sitharaman said that Mr Thakur had attended the jawan’s cremation on Thursday.
Ms Sitharaman said that if Mr Thakur was being accused of being insensitive despite this, “the propaganda was with an agenda to malign him.”
Yet, many pointed out that his celebratory mode so close to the village in mourning was in bad taste. Despite repeated attempts, Mr Thakur, who was in Himachal Pradesh, could not be contacted.
CRPF jawan Pankaj Badiyal, who belonged to Sanot village was killed in the Maoist ambush in Bastar in Chhattisgarh on June 29. He was cremated on Thursday.
The BJP even claimed that there were no celebrations organised for Mr Thakur. Rather, some of the state unit leaders had congratulated him when he went there to participate in the anti-price rise rally organised by the BJP state unit. The party also said that other senior state unit leaders of the party too had also gone to pay homage to the slain soldier.
Mr Thakur was made the BJP’s youth wing chief on June 28, despite a section within the party opposing his appointment.
This section had maintained that there were other deserving candidates for the post and Mr Thakur’s was selected for the post merely because he is Mr Dhumal’s son.
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