BJP leader Purandeswari makes 'spit' remarks against Chhattisgarh CM Bhupesh Baghel, triggers row
Jagdalpur, Sep 2: In controversial remarks, BJP General Secretary D Purandeswari on Thursday said if her party workers "spit", Chhattisgarh Chief Minister Bhupesh Baghel and his cabinet will get "swept away".
Purandeswari, in-charge of Chhattisgarh, made the remarks while exhorting BJP activists to work with a resolve to bring the party in power in the state in the 2023 assembly polls.
The comments triggered a controversy with Bahgel reacting by saying that "if anyone spits on the sky, it falls on one's own face".
While addressing BJP workers on the concluding day of the three-day- long 'chintan shivir (brainstorming session) of the party here, Purandeswari said, We appeal to you (activists) to work with a resolve. If you turn back and spit, then Bhupesh Baghel and his entire cabinet will be swept away. With this resolution you have to work and with your hard work, the BJP will definitely be elected to power in 2023. The BJP is a party with different principles, whose workers serve the poor, destitute and helpless with selfless and dedicated spirit, she said.
Every worker is respected in the BJP even if he or she hails from a small town or village, the former Union minister added.
She said an answer will be received immediately if you ask who will become the next Congress president.
However, this was not the case in the BJP where any worker who deserves can rise to become the party president, Purandeswari said.
She said winds of change in the state have started blowing from Bastar, a tribal dominated region.
The ruling Congress has "cheated" the people of Chhattisgarh and they will give the party a befitting reply, she added.
Reacting to her "spit" remarks, Chief Minister Baghel said he did not expect such a statement from the BJP leader.
What reaction should I give to such a statement? I did not expect that D Purandeshwari's mental state would stoop down to this level after joining the BJP. She was well when she was with us (Congress) as Union Minister oS state.. he said while talking to reporters here at the helipad.
If (anyone) spits on the sky, it falls on one's own face, Baghel added.
Purandeswari quit the Congress in 2014 and joined the BJP. She was a minister in the Congress-led UPA government.
The saffron party, that ruled the state for 15 years before being ousted from power by the Congress in the 2018 polls, organized a brainstorming session for the first time in the politically significant and tribal-dominated Bastar region since the formation of the state in 2000.
The conclave is being seen as an exercise of the party to regain its tribal vote base in the region where it had put up a dismal show in the 2018 assembly elections.
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Sonia Gandhi, Rahul eyed Rs 2000 cr properties without investing a penny: BJP
New Delhi (PTI): The BJP on Friday dared Congress leaders facing corruption charges to seek a quick and time-bound disposal of cases, as it slammed the party for citing politics as the reason for the ED's action against Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi in the National Herald case.
The ruling BJP kept the heat on the opposition party following the ED's chargesheet against the Gandhis and accused chief ministers from the Congress-ruled states of ploughing public money as advertisement into the weekly newspaper which few read.
Former Union minister Anurag Thakur alleged that the Congress used the newspaper as its ATM, claiming that Gandhis sought to acquire properties worth Rs 2,000 crores of the National Herald without investing a penny from their pocket.
Both Gandhis together owned 76 per cent of the Young Indian company which was, he said, given Rs 50 lakh loan by the Congress.
The company then took over the Associated Journals Limited, which owns the newspaper affiliated to the Congress, in lieu of Rs 90 crore it owed to the opposition party, he said.
Thakur asked if a political party can give a loan.
To a question about the allegation that the ED action was politically motivated, the BJP leader dared Congress leaders facing corruption charges to move courts to seek quick and time-bound trial in the cases against them.
"If they have guts, they should do it," he said, adding that in the "Congress model of corruption" the thieves make a lot of noises.
The National Herald case, he said, has stunned the Congress ecosystem into silence.
Thakur noted Gandhis have moved courts for quashing action against them for many times since a lower court took cognizance of the matter before the Modi government came to power.
The courts gave them no relief except that they are on bail, he said, adding that the judiciary did not intervene in the Enforcement Directorate's probe.
Turning to his home state Himachal Pradesh where the Congress is in power, Thakur accused the party of not fulfilling any of its 10 main promises but spending crores of rupees in advertisement in the National Herald.
"Does any Congress leader or member read it in Himachal," he asked, demanding that people should be given details of money spent by different Congress governments in advertisements in the newspaper, which is available digitally.
The Congress has been organising protests in different parts of the country against the ED action.
