BJP president Amit Shah on Friday said the party will take appropriate action against its Bhopal Lok Sabha candidate Sadhvi Pragya Singh Thakur and two other leaders over the comments hailing Mahatma Gandhi's assassin Nathuram Godse.
"Party has served her a show cause notice and asked her (Sadhvi) to reply within 10 days. After she files a reply, party's disciplinary committee will take appropriate action," Shah said while addressing a press conference at the party headquarters along with Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Replying to questions, he said, "We won't consider their remarks on Godse as personal."
His comments come in the wake of a raging controversy triggered by Thakur's remarks hailing Godse as a "true patriot" and Union Minister Ananthkumar Hegde and BJP MP Nalinkumar Kateel backing Mahatma Gandhi's assassin.
When asked about fielding Thakur in Bhopal, Shah said defended her candidature saying it is a 'satyagraha' against the "fake case of saffron terror".
"Pragya Thakur's candidature is a 'satyagraha' against a fake case of bhagwa (saffron) terror. I want to ask Congress, some people were earlier arrested in Samjhauta Express who were related to Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) and later released. A compensation of Rs 5 lakh was given to them as part of votebank politics. A fake case of 'bhagwa terror' was made in which accused were released by the court," Shah said.
"The entire Hindu community was defamed and Congress president should tender an apology for this," he added.
Following up on Thakur's remarks, Hegde, an MP from Uttara Kannada, had tweeted, "Am glad that 7 decades later today's generation debates in a changed perceptional environment and gives good scope for the condemned to be heard upon. #NathuramGodse would have finally felt happy with this debate."
However, he later deleted the post and claimed that his account was hacked.
"My Twitter account has been breached twice in the past one week and certain tweets have been posted on my timeline which has been discarded and deleted. Regret the posts attributed to me," he said in a fresh tweet.
In another post, Hedge wrote, "My account was hacked since yesterday. There is no question of justifying Gandhi ji's murder. There can be no sympathy or justification of Gandhi ji's murder. We all have full respect for Gandhi ji's contribution to the nation."
Meanwhile, Kateel, an MP from Dakshina Kannada, reportedly tweeted, "Godse killed one, Kasab killed 72, Rajiv Gandhi killed 17,000. You judge who is more cruel in this?"
Kateel later deleted the post and apologised on the micro-blogging site.
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