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Congress senior leader Jaffer Sharief urges former President Pranab Mukherjee to reconsider his decision with RSS meet

Speed News Desk | Updated on: 30 May 2018, 12:08 IST

As the Congress has declined to comment on former president Pranab Mukherjee’s acceptance of RSS’s invitation to be the chief guest at its event, senior Congress leader Jaffer Sharief wrote to Mukherjee and urges him to reconsider his decision to attend the RSS’s event.

Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) is an ideological mentor to Bharatiya Janata Party. He said that Mukherjee’s acceptance of the invitation had stunned many people in the Congress and beyond.


Sharief, who is a former railways minister, wrote that he was unable to understand the ‘compelling reasons’ for travelling to the RSS headquarters in Nagpur. He had recently met Mr Mukherjee to invite him for a book release function.

Explaining why he had written the letter, the former Union Minister said “It shocked us so we wrote, we asked him as to what prompted him, why is he suddenly going. We thought he was maintaining 'no-allegiance' stance to any party, as it is after one becomes President”.

The former Railway Minister said Mr Mukherjee's decision to go to RSS is surprising & shocking.

 

Within hours of sending it to the former president’s, he made public the letter.

However, Sharief’s stand was in a sharp contrast to the one that he had taken 13 months ago. He had written to Prime Minister Narendra Modi in April 2017 to nominate RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat as the President.

Explaining his recommendation of Mr Bhagwat as president, he had argued that Mr Bhagwat might belong to a different school of thought in India ‘but there should not be any doubt about his patriotism, love for the people of India, loyalty to the nation”.

On the other hand, Congress chief Rahul Gandhi routinely accuses RSS of trying to divide the country along the religious line and to run the government by remote control.

Also, read: Replace Mahatma Gandhi and put Veer Savarkar's picture on Indian currency, asks Hindu Mahasabha

First published: 30 May 2018, 12:08 IST