BJP issues gag order on Pragya Thakur
Controversial Bhopal MP Pragya Thakur has been virtually isolated within the party and told by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) not to speak in public, after embarrassing the leadership with a string of gaffes in recent months, two party leaders said.
The BJP's Madhya Pradesh head Rakesh Singh conveyed the warning to Thakur, 49, that the next verbal indiscretion would be followed by "serious" action against her, said the two leaders, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
In her latest public remarks, Thakur said at a condolence meeting in Bhopal on Monday that "black magic" practised by the Opposition may have been behind deaths of top leaders of the BJP, including former Union ministers Arun Jaitley and Sushma Swaraj, and former Madhya Pradesh chief minister Babulal Gaur.
"A saint met me during Lok Sabha elections and told me that the Opposition might use black magic (marak shakti) against the BJP, and that it would harm the party and the leaders who are efficient, hardworking and manage the party affairs," Thakur said.
"I had forgotten what the saint had said in the crowd, but when I see today that party's top leaders Shushma ji, Jaitley ji and Babulal Gaur ji are dying while undergoing pain, it occurs to me if it [the prophesy] is true," she added.
"You may or may not believe it but the truth won't change," she said.
Just a week earlier, at a condolence meeting for Swaraj in Bhopal, Thakur kept sending slips of paper to the local BJP leadership requesting that she be allowed to say a few words in honour of the late former Union minister, but her requests were ignored, local leaders said.
"We couldn't do the same at Monday's meeting because Babulal Gaur was a Bhopal leader and so it was unavoidable that the Bhopal MP speaks. The party realizes that every time she speaks, she inevitably makes mistakes,'' said a leader who is privy to the decision to gag Thakur.
Her aide JP Sharma said, "Do you think anyone can stop Sadhviji from speaking?'' When confronted with BJP claims that she had been excluded from invitations to various events including one hosted by the mayor of Bhopal recently, he said Thakur had not attended the events because she was unwell. "She falls ill very frequently. Sometimes, she sits down and immediately feels unwell. So she doesn't go out too much,'' said Sharma.
Till date, no party worker has been appointed as her constituency representative. Party leaders said that it was because workers were not keen to work with Thakur, who has been reprimanded by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in the past.
When she made a statement during the Lok Sabha election that Mahatma Gandhi's assassin Nathuram Godse was a "true patriot", Modi said that he could never forgive her from his heart for that remark.
Thakur has also not been allotted accommodation in Bhopal yet. "It's unfair to say only she hasn't been allotted [accommodation], there are many others,'' said Sharma, adding, "she has many devotees and they all want her to stay with them.''
Former BJP minister and senior Madhya Pradesh leader Hitesh Bajpai played down the gag order. "We know that some controversies have happened due to her opinions at various platforms. it may be due to misunderstanding of her statements by the media--she is a non-political type of political person,'' he said.
Senior leaders admit that the gag order is difficult to implement because Thakur, as an MP, is bound to be making speeches . "We also make concessions for the fact that she has been tortured in prison,'' said a leader to HT.
Thakur, an accused in the 2008 Malegaon bomb blast case in Maharashtra, has made several controversial statements in the past. She said Mumbai's anti-terrorist squad chief Hemant Karkare, who died in the 26/11 terrorist attacks in Mumbai, had perished because of a curse had put on him when he was investigating the blasts.
At another point of time, Thakur also claimed that cow urine had cured her of cancer.
"The case of Pragya Thakur is the result of the BJP'S conflicting pursuits -- on the one hand it must please fringe forces to humour the core ideological constituency. But on the other hand, there is need to be modernist and secure the support of 'middle' India. The challenge is to balance between these contrasting purposes and thus people like her will be frowned upon and publicly sidelined but chances of disciplinary action is remote,'' said author and political analyst Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay.
(Inputs from Hindustan Times)
