BJP divided over Vij’s Gandhi remark

Pradeep Sharma

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, January 16

Senior Haryana Minister Anil Vij’s comments on Mahatma Gandhi has divided the ruling BJP in the state. 

While several senior leaders, including Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar, have termed the comments as “personal opinion having nothing to do with the party,” the firebrand five-time MLA from Ambala Cantonment yesterday found tacit support from a section of the party such as Kurukshetra MP Raj Kumar Saini. 

Left red-faced by Vij’s comments, the central and state units of the BJP went into a damage-control exercise. While Khattar distanced himself from Vij’s statement, the central leadership condemned it. Against the backdrop of political uproar over the new Khadi Village Industries Commission (KVIC) calendar featuring Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Vij had said the former was a bigger brand name than Mahatma Gandhi. 

“Since the time when Gandhi’s name got associated with khadi...it could not progress. The day Mahatma Gandhi came on the rupee, its devaluation started. Gradually, he will be removed from the notes also. It’s good that Gandhi has been replaced with Prime Minister Narendra Modi... Modi is a bigger brand name,” Vij had said. 

Though Vij later retracted from his statement, the political damage was done to the ruling party. 

The Opposition INLD and the Congress got much-needed political ammunition against the BJP government. 

Even as the issue had started dying down, BJP’s Kurukshetra MP Raj Kumar Saini, who had brought embarrassment to the party on several occasions in the past, revived the issue virtually reiterating Vij’s stand yesterday. Echoing Vij’s views, Saini asserted that Modi was a popular mass leader and “there was nothing wrong in projecting Modi as an icon of the government-promoted khadi sector,” he said. Saini said opposition parties’ demand for legal action against Vij was a “political gimmick”. Saini’s utterances brought to the fore differing voices within the ruling party which had been trying hard to project a united front before public.