‘Outright lie’: Cong tears into Shah for ‘vote chori’ charge against Nehru

New Delhi: The Congress on Thursday rebutted Home Minister Amit Shah’s “vote chori” charge against Jawaharlal Nehru, saying the claim that he was made the prime minister despite Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel being the popular choice is a “lie” and a “figment of imagination”.

Congress general secretary in-charge communications Jairam Ramesh said party colleague Piyush Babele has “totally exposed” one of the home minister’s “many lies” in the Lok Sabha and shared his video on X.

The Congress also shared Babele’s video and said it exposes the “outright lie” of Shah. In another post, Ramesh said, “While speaking in Parliament, BJP members, starting with the G2 themselves, have attacked Nehru pulling out some document or the other from their bunch of papers.”

They try to give the impression that they have done some deep research and discovered something sensational that has been kept suppressed, he said.

“But the truth is almost invariably they are using material that are in the public domain especially in the 100 volumes of Nehru’s Selected Works (1903-1964), now easily accessible on nehru archive.in,” Ramesh said.

Intervening in the debate on election reforms in the Lok Sabha on Wednesday, Shah cited three instances of alleged “vote chori” by Jawaharlal Nehru, Indira Gandhi and Sonia Gandhi.

“So, 28 votes went to Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel and two were cast in favour of Jawaharlal Nehru. But Nehru ji ended up being the prime minister,” he had said, prompting an uproar in the Opposition benches.

In the video shared by Ramesh and the Congress, Babele said the claim that Nehru was made PM despite Patel being the popular choice is a “figment of imagination” of the RSS.

“According to this lie, it is stated that in 1946, elections to Congress presidentship took place and Patel got more votes but despite Nehru getting less votes he was made Congress president and therefore went on to become the prime minister. The truth is that the election that had to take place in 1946 for Congress presidentship did not take place,” Babele said.

“As they (BJP-RSS) say that voting took place, there was no such voting.

This is a lie that has been spread. The president was made but the situation in the country was bad due to riots and law and order was disturbed and there was tension prevailing, Shimla parleys were taking place, Maulana Azad had been the Congress president and the situation was not there that elections to elect a party president take place,” he said.