Trying to disassociate the Congress party from his remark on Mumbai ATS chief Hemant Karkare, Congress general secretary Digvijay Singh on Sunday said, “It’s not a Congress Party issue... The issue was a conversation between Digvijay Singh and Karkare.”
The main Opposition BJP on Sunday said it would force him to resign for the “absurd” remarks on death of Hemant Karkare during the terror strikes.
“Knowing Digvijay Singh, I am sure he will not resign on his own (for his comments) and he will not agree to do so soon. So, the Congress should force him to resign. Otherwise, the citizens, who love this country, will never forgive the party,” BJP spokesperson Shahnawaz Hussain told reporters.
Attacking Mr Singh for saying recently that prior to 26/11 Karkare was getting threats due to his investigation into the role of some Hindu outfits in terror incidents, Mr Hussain said the Congress leader should not try to “take revenge on the nation, against those who lost lives in terror attacks and the country’s communal harmony” for his party “sidelining” him in the recent times.
“To remain in the limelight, Digvijay Singh is making absurd statements. The Congress has only distanced itself from his statements. But that is not enough or satisfactory. The Congress has to apologise to the nation for its general secretary’s remarks and get him to resign,” he said.
“The Congress cannot distance itself from its general secretary’s remarks. Otherwise, it would mean that they were instigating Singh to make remarks that trigger communal passions and later condemn it too to escape blame,” he said.
On the Wikileaks release on the Congress playing religious politics after the terror strike, Mr Hussain said: “WikiLeaks has made it clear that the Congress is a communal outfit and whips up communal frenzy for its own short-term electoral benefits. Its leaders A.R. Antulay and Digvijay Singh deliberately attempted to comunalise the 26/11 attacks. Karkare fell to bullets of Pakistani terrorists, but Antulay and Singh raised the bogey of Hindu outfits.”
He further said: “It has become clear that the Congress is the communal party though they accuse others of being so, and Digvijay Singh is its communal card. Either the Congress should take action against him or thrash his statements completely, not just distance itself from it.” In Varanasi, BJP leader Murli Manohar Joshi asked the Congress leadership to explain how such a person was holding the post of the general secretary in the party.
[Meanwhile, a senior Congress leader on Sunday suggested that the phone call between Mr Singh and Karkare must be “probed” for the sake of national security, reports PTI. “It is necessary for national security to probe telecon between Digvijay Singh and Karkare even though latter was killed by Pakistani terrorists,” former Congress MP Anil Shastri posted on his Twitter account.]