The arrest of Ahmedabad-based ‘sadhvi’ Pragya Singh Thakur in the Malegoan blast case has revived the Hindutva agenda of Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) on the eve of crucial legislative assembly election in five states — Delhi, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Mizoram.
Firebrand VHP leader Pravin Togadia today announced a country-wide agitation to expose the “UPA government’s designs of targeting the Hindus and Army officers to please the Muslims and get their votes in the election”.
Togadia challenged the government to produce evidence against the sadhvi or any other Hindu in the Malegoan blast case. He accused the government of “implicating Pragya Singh to divert people from its failure to tackle jehadi terrorism”.
However, the VHP leaders kept mum on the bizarre incident in which one of their state-level leaders has been booked on sedition charges by the Narendra Modi government in the BJP-ruled Gujarat.
The Modi government had arrested VHP’s Ahmedabad leader Ashwin Patel on Thursday on charges of sedition, defamation and inflaming communal passions. Patel, an Ahmedabad-based businessman, was initially reported as missing. However, two days later the police claimed to have picked him up for interrogation.
The FIR lodged against Patel says, “For the past two to two-and-a-half months, derogatory and defamatory SMSes were doing the rounds about Narendra Modi and his government. Besides, there were SMSes meant to mislead people about the Malegaon, Modasa and Ahmedabad blasts and the language used could have incited communal passions”.
Modi has apparently no love lost for the Hindutva brigade, including the VHP, and he is reportedly not even on talking terms with the Sangh Parivar leaders. However, Patel’s arrest has heightened the tension between Modi and the VHP. Interestingly, VHP and other Sangh Parivar bodies had openly campaigned against Modi when he was seeking re-election last year.
Today, Togadia maintained a deep silence about Patel’s arrest.
