Bharatiya Janata Party senior leader M Venkaiah Naidu on Sunday accused the Congress party of not giving prominence to any national leaders except for the Nehru-Indira Gandhi family.
Addressing a meeting on "Statue of Unity" to promote Sardar Vallabhbhai Patil's proposed statue in Gujarat here, Venkaiah Naidu said that leaders like Sardar Patel were not only sidelined, but were given negative branding by the Congress party.
Quoting a reference from a book written by Moulana Abul Kalam Azad dating back to April 26, 1946, he said that Mahatma Gandhi wanted to make Sardar Patel the president of Congress party. Of 15 States, as many as 12 States were in favour of giving Congress leadership to Sardar Patel. However, he said that Pandit Nehru was against the move, he alleged.
Further, Venkaiah Naidu said that Pandit Nehru projected Sardar Patel in a bad light before the then Viceroy General Lord Mountbatten stating that latter was not capable of running the country. The Congress party continued its propaganda against Sardar Patel even after his death and tried to project him as a communal leader.
He said it was due to the wrong policies of Pandit Nehru-led Congress party that the Kashmir dispute could not be resolved. He also alleged that Pandit Nehru wanted to prolong the Hyderabad State's merger with the Indian Union and was secretly backing Nizam Mir Osman Ali Khan.
The BJP leader accused the Congress party of promoting communalism in the country by creating Hindu-Muslim rift.
