Swaraj had rued Atal Bihari Vajpayee not getting Bharat Ratna and Brijesh Mishra getting Padma Vibushan.
The Congress has taken a dig at the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Sushma Swaraj’s “tweeting objections” over the Padma Vibhushan conferred on former national security adviser Brajesh Mishra. “We cannot understand her comment that this award places Mishra in the same category as former prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee,” commented party spokesperson Shakeel Ahmed.
He said by Sushma’s logic reflected in her comments over the social networking site Twitter, all the Padma Vibhushan awardees now stand in the same category as Vajpayee.
“Why single out Mishra? After all there are other awardees who have been honoured this year, and many more who have been conferred the same honour after Vajpayee got it in 1992,” Ahmed said.
The Congress spokesperson however side stepped the issue of Bharat Ratna for Vajpayee and the BJP’s demand that the former prime minister be granted the nation’s highest civilian award. “I do not want to comment on that issue,” he said.
Mishra, a retired diplomat is the son of former Madhya Pradesh chief minister Dwarka Prasad Mishra who was reputed as a Chanakaya and was close to the former prime minister Indira Gandhi. He was, however, Vajpayee’s main troubleshooter during the NDA regime and is the only non-IAS officer to have occupied the post of principal secretary in the prime minister’s office.
During the UPA-I’s quest for a nuclear deal with the US, he openly backed prime minister Manmohan Singh, and this earned him the ire of the BJP’s. The Padma Vibhushan is seen as the government’s recognition of this contribution from Mishra, and it seems to have displeased the BJP.
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