Days after Haryana Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda was booed by the BJP activists during a rally attended by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Jharkhand Chief Minister Hemant Soren too faced a similar situation when hundreds of BJP supporters booed him on Thursday.
The Jharkhand CM had to face embarrassing situation while he was delivering a speech welcoming Prime Minister Narendra Modi in the tribal state.
Modi arrived here to inaugurate a project of Power Grid Corporation of India and announce the commencement of work of NTPC’s North Karanpura Super Thermal Power Project (3X660 MW).
The BJP supporters were so loud with their pro-Modi slogans that Soren had to stop his speech for a while.
In order to silence the BJP cadre, the Jharkahnd CM said that the stage has some significance and its sanctity should be maintained.
Earlier, Haryana Chief Minister on Tuesday vowed not to ever attend any event in future that Modi will be part of and share the dais with him.
Hooda’s reaction came after he was not allowed to speak at the foundation laying event here of 166 km Kaithal-Rajasthan border section of the National Highway-152/65.
BJP leader Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi took a dig at the Congress saying that how would the grand old party ignore the ‘Modi mantra of good governance’.
Targeting the Prime Minister over the issue, AICC general secretary Ambika Soni said that no one has the right to “humiliate” duly elected chief ministers by “inciting” supporters and said that Modi should immediately ask his partymen to desist from such acts.
“This is a well-thought out plan, a conspiracy… If the Prime Minister was serious, he should have sent a directive to his partymen immediately to stop doing all this,” Soni said.
But she remained non-committal on whether the party high command has issued any direction to its chief ministers to avoid Modi’s functions saying, “No such direction is required to be given” as both Chavan and Haryana Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda are experienced leaders.
At the same time, Soni stressed that “the entire Congress party is of the opinion that we will not tolerate any such insult. Whatever they (the chief ministers) have done is right. We are fully behind them”.
She said it was not a big thing for Congress to push 500 supporters to “humiliate” Modi at such meetings, but that would affect the dignity of the post.
Congress spokesperson Manish Tewari alleged that BJP cadres are “deployed to humiliate” public representatives belonging to Congress in an “orchestrated” manner.
He said that if somebody is to be blamed for the situation, then it is BJP.
“It was up to the Prime Minister to ensure, since he was present on the dais, that such untoward incidents do not take place. After all, if the prime minister of India is incapable of maintaining the dignity of a chief minister, then who else is going to maintain it,” he said.
