Remark On Godse Gets Pragya Thakur Dropped From Defence Panel

Another controversy erupts in parliament when BJP MP Pragya Singh Thakur's comment on Nathuram Godse did not go down well with her party, hence they decided to bar her from attending its parliamentary party meeting in the on-going Parliament session on Thursday. Her remarks on Godse in which she called him a patriot in the Lok Sabha upset the ruling party and so she has also been removed from the consultative committee on defence, BJP working president JP Nadda announced today.

A serial offender, Pragya Thakur has not said this for the first time, she praised Nathuram Godse during the Lok Sabha election campaign, where she had described Godse as a patriot, triggering a huge political storm. But this time around her party has condemned the controversial Hindutva leader's remarks in order to avoid any political crisis that could be triggered by her remarks. They said the party does not support or encourage such ideology. “Not just calling Godse a deshbhakt (patriot), but we condemn even such thinking. Mahatma Gandhi's ideology is relevant now as much as it was before,” Defence Minister Rajnath Singh said in Lok Sabha today.

​“We have decided that Pragya Singh Thakur will be removed from the consultative committee of defence, and in this session she will not be allowed to participate in BJP parliamentary party meetings,” said Nadda.

Key Takeaways:

• ​In the statement released by BJP, working president JP Nadda announced that the party does not support MP Pragya Singh Thakur's comment on Nathuram Godse. ​
• Opposition parties attacked the government and said Thakur's remarks were a “perfect representation” of the BJP's “deplorable hate politics.”
• Pragya Thakur was removed from the consultative committee of the defence ministry.

Nadda and the party have also decided to remove Thakur from the consultative committee on defence, to which she was recently appointed.

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​“The statement given by MP Pragya Thakur is condemnable. BJP never supports such statement and we do not support this ideology. We have decided that Thakur will not attend meetings of BJP parliamentary party during the session,” he told reporters.

Thakur, a first-time MP from Bhopal, stirred a controversy after making the outrageous remark during DMK member A Raja's narration of a statement by Nathuram Godse before a court on why he killed Mahatma Gandhi. After seeing protests by the opposition in the house, BJP members asked Thakur to sit down.

Later, pressed by reporters to clarify her remarks, Pragya Thakur said, “Listen to what I said first. I'd reply tomorrow.”

"Terrorist Pragya calls terrorist Godse a patriot. A sad day in the history of India's parliament," tweeted Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, calling out Thakur’s remarks

Thakur won the 2019 election in Bhopal against Congress’ Digvijay Singh, a two time Chief Minister. Thakur is an accused in the 2008 Malegaon blast. Her surprise ticket to the party created a stir as she is an accused in terror activities including a bomb blast in Malegaon town of Maharashtra in 2008.

As far as Thakur’s extremist views go, immediately after her candidature was announced for the Bhopal seat, she described Digvijay Singh as an “anti-Hindu leader who called Hindus terrorists.” Thakur has been making embarrassing headlines. She claimed that she was one among the people who demolished Babri Masjid on December 6, 1992 and that she was “proud” of it. She even went on to term Mahatma Gandhi’s assassin Nathuram Godse a “patriot”, fuelling the controversy. Thakur has been served many EC notices for violating Model Code of Conduct and for stirring up communal feelings.

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Feature Picture Credit: Telegraph India

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