BJP slams RJD for 'coffin' dig at new Parliament building
New Delhi (PTI): The Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) on Sunday likened the architecture of the new Parliament building to a coffin, drawing a sharp response from the BJP which said people will bury the Bihar party in such a coffin in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls.
As the new building was inaugurated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the ruling party in Bihar put out a tweet that showed a coffin and the new legislature building side by side and asked, "What is this?"
Hitting back, BJP spokesperson Gaurav Bhatia said, "People of the country will bury you in the same coffin in 2024 and will not give you the opportunity to enter the new temple of democracy. It is decided that the parliament building belongs to the country and the coffin to you."
Bhatia said the inauguration marked a historic moment and parties such as the RJD will keep crying hoarse.
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BJP asks Sonia Gandhi to return Nehru letters to Prime Ministers' Museum and Library
New Delhi (PTI): The BJP on Monday asked former Congress president Sonia Gandhi to return the correspondences of India's first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru with a host of personalities to the Prime Ministers' Museum and Library, saying the historical documents belonged to the country and were not anyone's personal property.
BJP MP and spokesperson Sambit Patra cited reports of the Prime Ministers' Museum and Library's (PMML) deliberations on the issue to note that Nehru's correspondences with Edwina Mountbatten, wife of the last British viceroy to India, and eminent leaders Jayaprakash Narayan and Jagjivan Ram lay with the erstwhile Nehru Museum and Library Society, which returned them to Sonia Gandhi in 2008.
The Nehru museum was expanded to include memorials to all prime ministers and renamed the Prime Ministers' Museum and Library after the BJP came to power at the Centre.
Patra told reporters that 51 cartons of Nehru's correspondences were given to Sonia Gandhi after approval of the museum's then director.
However, following a legal opinion, Rizwan Kadri -- one of the 29 members of the society tasked with running the PMML -- recently wrote to Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi, seeking his help in restoring the papers to the museum's custody, he added.
The BJP leader said Kadri did not receive any reply.
Taking a swipe at the Gandhi family, Patra said these were not personal property but historical documents part of the "treasure" of India.
As Nehru was a member of the family, it suffers from a sense of entitlement over his letters, he alleged.
He asked, "What were the contents of the letter that the first family felt should not be made public?"
He noted that the digitisation process began in the museum in 2010 but the Gandhi family decided to take back the letters' possession before that.
Patra had earlier raised the issue in the Lok Sabha during Question Hour but Union Culture Minister Gejendra Singh Shekhawat declined to answer, saying his query was unrelated to the written question submitted in advance.
