'Obstinate' Nehru caused Partition: BJP LS candidate

BJP's Ratlam-Jhabua Lok Sabha candidate Guman Singh Damor stoked a controversy, claiming that Partition could have been avoided if Jawaharlal Nehru had allowed Mohammad Ali Jinnah to be prime minister.

Reacting to the BJP leader's comment, the Congress said Damor does not know the history and asked him to contest polls in Pakistan.

Damor, in an election rally on Saturday in Ranapur town, said, "If (India's first prime minister) Nehru was not obstinate during the time of Independence, then this nation would not have been divided into two."

"Jinnah (the founder of Pakistan) was an advocate and a learned man. If a decision was taken to make Jinnah PM at the time, then India would not have been partitioned," he claimed.

Ranapur is a town in the Ratlam-Jhabua Lok Sabha constituency.

Earlier, several BJP leaders have held Jinnah responsible for Partition and Nehru of coming in the way of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel from becoming prime minister.

Damor alleged that Congress created the problems that Jammu and Kashmir are facing at present.

The BJP leader, a retired engineer-in-chief of the state government's Public Health Engineering Department, was elected as MLA from the Jhabua assembly seat in the November 2018 elections.

Damor is pitted against Congress leader and former Union minister Kantilal Bhuria from the Lok Sabha seat, which goes to polls on May 19.

The Congress hit back at Damor with the party's Jhabua district president Nirmal Mehta asking the former to contest polls from Pakistan.

"Damor doesn't know the country's history. Pakistan was created because Jinnah was obstinate. Why doesn't he go and contest polls in Pakistan," Mehta said.