BJP burns effigies of 'pro-China' Kamal Nath

In a seeming role reversal, ruling BJP on Sunday burnt effigies of state Congress president Kamal Nath, accusing him of tweaking with the government policies to benefit China as union commerce minister in the Dr. Man Mohan Singh –led UPA government.

The move is being viewed as a clever BJP ploy to turn the heat on the former chief minister ahead of the by-elections for 24 seats due sometimes in September.

Never before in the state’s history has a ruling party burnt effigies of the state’s top opposition leader. The effigy-burning protest was organised across the state in defiance of prohibitory measures for Covid-19.

The police force was deployed to facilitate the protests instead of taking action against potential violators of social distancing norms in public places.

Ironically, the Bhopal police were quick to register an FIR against former chief minister Digvijay Singh and his 150 supporters on the charge of violating social distancing norms when they organised a bicycle rally last week to register protest against continuous rise in prices of petroleum products.

State BJP president VD Sharma, who led to effigy-burning in Bhopal, alleged that as union commerce minister Kamal Nath drastically lowered custom duties on import from China on many products which were easily available in India.

His decision rendered a large number of small artisans and traders jobless and damaged the cottage industry in India, the BJP leader added. A day ago, BJP national vice president Prabhat Jha had accused Kamal Nath of having acted as a Chinese agent for the benefit of the Gandhi family.

Reacting to the allegations, Kamal Nath said the BJP is resorting to diversionary tactics to deflect attention from the Modi government’s failure in dealing with Chinese incursion in Laddakh.

“All these allegations against me are baseless but the BJP is disingenuously trying to dig up old matters to create a smokescreen of lies”.