Indira reference taken off Bihar website as Cong objects

A reference to former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi’s rule as “worse than British rule in India” on the Bihar government’s official website was removed on Monday after strong objections from the state Congress.

Officials in Chief Minister Nitish Kumar’s office said that he had directed the authorities concerned to remove the reference as the issue threatened to blow up into a controversy.

Earlier, Bihar Congress president Ashok Choudhary and other leaders had said that the party was proud of Gandhi and would take up the issue with Kumar.

“It is not only wrong but condemnable. We will take up this issue with the Bihar government,” Congress spokesperson Sarbat Jahan Fatima said on Monday. Another Congress leader Prem Chand Mishra said it was a serious issue.

Choudhary, who is also the Education Minister in the state Cabinet, said it was highly objectionable if anything of the sort reported was mentioned on the government website.

“It was he (Jayaprakash Narayan) who steadfastly and staunchly opposed the autocratic rule of Indira Gandhi and her younger son Sanjay Gandhi. Fearing people’s reaction to his opposition, Indira Gandhi had him arrested on the eve of declaring National Emergency beginning June 26, 1975. He was put in the Tihar Jail, located near Delhi, where notorious criminals are jailed,” said a reference in the Bihar history section on the website. 

It said: “Thus, in free India, this septuagenarian, who had fought for India’s freedom alongside Indira Gandhi’s father Jawaharlal Nehru, received a treatment that was worse than what the British had meted out to Gandhiji in Champaran in 1917, for his speaking out against oppression.”

The Congress is part of the ruling Grand Alliance in Bihar. 

Meanwhile, the BJP gloated over unease in Congress over the issue. BJP national secretary Shrikant Sharma raked up the articles, which had slammed Nehru and Sonia Gandhi, published in a Congress journal in Mumbai two weeks ago and claimed that “truth” about the Congress and its leaders was coming out from various platforms. 

“Earlier it was ‘Congress Darshan’ and now we have the Bihar government’s website, truth is coming out,” he said.