BJP senior leader M Venkaiah Naidu on Sunday accused the Congress party of giving no prominence to any national leader other than the Nehru-Gandhi family.
Addressing a meeting on "Statue of Unity", to promote Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel's proposed statue to be erected in Gujarat, Venkaiah Naidu said that leaders like Sardar Patel are not only sidelined, but also given negative branding by the Congress party.
Quoting a reference from a book written by Moulana Abul Kalam Azad dating back to April 26, 1946, he said that Mahatma Gandhi wanted to make Sardar Patel the president of the Congress party.
However, Pandit Nehru was against the move, Naidu alleged.
Further, Naidu said that Pandit Nehru had projected Sardar Patel in a bad light to the then Viceroy, General Lord Mountbatten, stating that Patel was "not capable of running the country".
The Congress party continued its propaganda against Sardar Patel even after his death and tried to project him as a communal leader.
He said that it was due to the wrong policies of the Nehru-led Congress party that the Kashmir dispute could not be resolved.
He also alleged that Pandit Nehru wanted to prolong the Hyderabad State's merger with the Indian Union and was secretly backing Nizam Mir Osman Ali Khan.
The BJP leader accused the Congress party of promoting communalism in the country by creating a Hindu-Muslim rift. (INN)