On Bapu’s birth anniv, grand old party says it is the only outfit to have followed Mahatma footsteps
Both the Congress and the BJP vied each other for the space to own Mahatma Gandhi's legacy on his 150th birth anniversary on October 2.
While Prime Minister Narendra Modi after paying tributes to the father of nation in Parliament and then at the Rajghat reached Ahmedabad to address an event in the honour of Mahatma Gandhi, the two parties jostled each other in the capital.
The Congress interim president Sonia Gandhi on Wednesday kicked off 'Gandhi Sandesh Yatra, a week-long programme of foot marches and hold different events across India. In Delhi, BJP president and union home minister Amit Shah launched a four-month-long 'Sankalp Yatra' to help BJP claim the legacy of Mahatma Gandhi.
While the grand old party can claim to be the rightful heir of Gandhi as he served as President of the Congress, the BJP, over the years have been focussing on sanitation, cleanliness and upliftment of the underprivileged, some of the ideals that Mahatma lived for.
Launching the Sankalp Yatra, Shah gave a clarion call to shun single-use plastic and urged the people to take an initiative to make it a mass movement. He credited PM Modi for taking forward the principles of Mahatma Gandhi by leading the Swachh Bharat in mission mode by urging people and making India open defecation free (ODF) and recently urging people to shun the single use plastic.
Focussing on the perils of single-use plastic, Shah said it takes nearly 400 years for it to degrade. He said even animals are adversely affected due to single-use plastic.
On the other hand, the Congress seemed deviating from the Gandhian principles by launching a frontal attack on the BJP for trying to usurp Mahatma's legacy.
Taking a jibe at the present BJP leadership, she told party workers at Rajghat that the Mahatma's soul would be pained had he seen what has happened to his India in the last five years.
"How will those who consider themselves supreme understand the sacrifices of Mahatma Gandhi....Those doing politics of falsehood will not understand Gandhi's philosophy of non-violence," she said. Her daughter and general secretary in-charge of Uttar Pradesh, Priyanka Gandhi Vadra kicked off the Yatra at Lucknow where she said, "It was the order of Gandhiji to pursue the path of truth.
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