New Delhi: Even as former President Pranab Mukherjee is all set to attend an event at the headquarters of the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh at Nagpur on Thursday evening, senior Congress leader and Rajya Sabha MP Ahmed Patel has expressed his displeasure over Mr Mukherjee, a former Congress man, attending the event.
In a post on social media late on Wednesday night, Mr Patel, the political adviser to former Congress president Sonia Gandhi, said ''I did not expect this from Pranab da".The tweet by Mr Patel came after his daughter and leader of the Delhi Congress Sharmishtha Mukherjee expressed her disagreement with her father over attending the RSS event.
In a series of tweets, Sharmishtha said,''Hope @CitiznMukherjee now realises from todays' incident, how BJP dirty tricks dept operates. Even RSS wouldn't believe that u r going 2 endorse its views in ur speech. But the speech will be forgotten, visuals will remain & those will be circulated with fake statements.
By going 2 Nagpur, u r giving BJP/RSS full handle 2 plant false stories, spread falls rumours as 2day & making it somewhat believable. And this is just d beginning!''While asserting that there is a lot of difference between the ideology of the Congress and that of the RSS, the Congress has, however, declined to comment on the development.
''Let the event happen,'' AICC spokesperson Tom Vadakkan told reporters earlier in the week on Mr Mukherjee attending the RSS event.The former President, a former Congressman, has accepted an invitation to be the chief guest at a function of the RSS on Thursday where he will address RSS trainees at the Sangh's headquarters in Nagpur.
Mr Mukherjee will visit the memorial of RSS founder KB Hedgewar and offer floral tributes .
The gathering will also be addressed by RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat.There is a lot of curiosity over what Pranab Mukherjee, who has been critical of the RSS ideology during his five-decade-long association with the Congress before he became President of India in 2012, will say at the event.(UNI)