Bhagwat visit fracas
2 min readPatna: The Opposition and ruling parties got embroiled in a war of words even before RSS sarsanghachalak (chief) Mohan Bhagwat reached Bihar on Tuesday afternoon.
On arrival, Bhagwat left for Nawada to take part in the officers’ training course (OTC) camp being organised there. As many as 275 RSS functionaries from Bihar and Jharkhand are taking part in the 21-day camp, which started on May 19. Bhagwat will address both the trainees and the trainers during his stay in Nawada and will return on May 25.
Reacting to Bhagwat’s Bihar visit, RJD national spokesperson and Rajya Sabha member Manoj Jha said: “We have nothing personal against Mohan Bhagwat but the hateful ideas he represents and spreads in society pose great challenge to harmony and cordiality. We cannot ignore the stark reality of what happened in different parts of Bihar during Ram Navami and just a month before he had visited Bihar.”
Adding more sting to the attack, Congress leader and MLC Prem Chandra Mishra said: “If the state’s communal harmony gets disturbed once again after visit of RSS chief, we will hold chief minister Nitish Kumar responsible for it.”
Mishra had demanded that the Nitish Kumar government should not have allowed him to come to Bihar.
The ruling BJP and the JDU, on the other hand, rubbished the Opposition’s attack.
“The RSS sarsanghachalak’s programme is decided in advance. The Opposition is making an issue out of Mohan Bhagwat visit just to attract minority votes. They must try to emulate RSS in the kind of social service it renders to the society and the country. RSS works for unity of the country,” said senior BJP leader and health minister Mangal Pandey.
JDU spokesperson and MLC Neeraj Kumar, on the other hand, demanded that the Congress and the RJD should first clarify whether or not there was any prohibition on Bhagwat’s visit to states ruled by Grand Alliance partners.
The RSS, however, refused to join the controversy. “We don’t react to comments of political parties. We, rather, believe in doing our work silently,” said an RSS office-bearer.
Sharing details about the purpose of Bhagwat’s visit, he said: “The current training programme is the second-year training in which only those RSS workers who have completed the first-year training have been invited. Our sarsanghachalak will brief the participants about things related to the Sangh’s working style, ways to organise shakhas (units), leadership skills and related topics.”
The training camp assumes special significance for the Sangh, as it has tasked its field officials to expand its organisational base by increasing the number of its shakhas by around 10 per cent by end of 2018. At present, the RSS has around 1,000 shakhas in north Bihar, while the corresponding figures for south Bihar and Jharkhand stand at 650 and 1,000 respectively.
Courtesy: The Telegraph
