BJP’s Bhopal Lok Sabha candidate Pragya Thakur on Tuesday hit out at her Congress opponent, Digvijaya Singh saying that she is contesting in the election to provide a fitting response to those who had equated “bhagwa” (saffron) with terrorism.
“I am here to fight those who linked Hindus and Bhagwa with terrorism,” she said.
While addressing a rally before submitting her nomination papers, Thakur claimed that “sanyasis” (female saints) had to take up ower when atrocities and excesses started to increase. She then cited her won example that women under the earlier Congress rule were subjected to all kinds of atrocities and torture. She then spoke about the former Congress spokesperson Priyanka Chaturvedi, who was reportedly forced to leave the party because of harassment and had later joined Shiv Sena.
She then claimed that Modi's government had ensured respect for women and that the state government under former CM Shivraj Singh Chouhan had undertaken several types of welfare schemes for women, which have now been halted by the Congress government.
Responding to Singh’s vision document for Bhopal’s development, Thakur said she would seek public advice before talking about such a plan.
After the rally, she led her party workers and supporters towards the collectorate and completed the nomination process amidst the chanting of mantras. However, during the event, a man who was suspected to a worker of the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) was waving a black flag to Thakur. He was however trashed by the BJP workers and later rescued by the police.
Outgoing Bhopal MP Alok Sanjar too filed his nomination as a ‘dummy’ candidate from the seat, a day after police registered an FIR against Thakur over her remarks on the 1992 demolition of the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya.
Thakur is an accused in the 2008 Malegaon bomb blast case. She had reportedly boasted about her role in the demolition of the 16th-century structure which leads to a notice by the EC directing the police to file an FIR against her on Monday.