The national general secretary of Bharatiya Janata Party Ram Madhav on Thursday dismissed allegations that BJP workers were engaged in Tripura after the party’s landslide victory in the Assembly election.
In an interview to Economic Times, Ram Madhav reiterated that his party or its workers had no hands in pulling down the statues of Communist icon Vladimir Lenin in the state.
According to the BJP national general secretary, the statues were erected by ‘some people who were once influenced by communism’.
“It was not a CPM or municipality installation,” Ram Madhav was quoted by ET as saying.
Ram Madhav further went on to state that the same ‘group of private individuals’ decided to bring down the statue on their own.
“They hired a JCB machine and pulled the statue down. Some people standing around cheered for it,” the ET quoted the BJP general secretary as saying.
Ram Madhav while reiterating that the question of vandalism does not arise also rubbished involvement of BJP in the whole incident while talking to the ET correspondent.
He went on to state that Tripura media has not presented the incident in that light, while adding that ‘it is entirely a CPM propaganda in Delhi because the party has been solidly thrashed in Tripura, and hence, is raking up this issue and playing the victim card to hide its failures’, the ET interview quoted Ram Madhav as saying.
In the ET interview, the BJP national general secretary also expressed regret over the fact that ‘some well-meaning people’ too have fallen prey to this propaganda.
Terming the recent developments as a conspiracy to defame Tripura, Ram Madhav further questioned CPM’s claim that 543 of its cadres have been injured by RSS volunteers in Tripura.
“I challenge them to show at least one person in any hospital. Nobody has been attacked,” he was quoted as saying in the ET report.
He went on to claim that on the contrary 11 of BJP workers are still undergoing treatment in hospitals who were injured in poll related violence.
However, Ram Madhav agreed that the attack on Periyar’s statue in Tamil Nadu was an act of vandalism.
“It is a mob going and destroying public property,” he told the ET correspondent.
The BJP national general secretary also emphasized that ‘historically’ it is the CPI-CPM cadre who have vandalised statues.
“They have been vandalizing public and private property wherever they are,” Ram Madhav asserted in the ET interview.