New Delhi: The Congress on Saturday demanded an apology from Union minister Kiren Rijiju over his criticism of Jawaharlal Nehru's handling of the Kashmir issue and asked Prime Minister Narendra Modi to rein in ministers from making "irresponsible statements". Hitting out at Rijiju, the Opposition party said insulting the country's first prime minister's contribution and memory is "unacceptable" and demanded that the minister withdraws his statement. Rijiju had stated that Nehru's "blunders", which, he said, included enacting Article 370 and taking the dispute with Pakistan to the United Nations, caused much tragedy, drained the country's resources and cost thousands of lives of soldiers and civilians in militancy.
Rijiju wrote an article for a portal citing "five Nehruvian blunders", including floating the idea of a plebiscite and terming Jammu and Kasmir's accession provisional. The minister had said it was important to realise past mistakes to build a new future and added that he has not tweaked history but stated facts to set the record straight. Slamming Rijiju, senior Congress leader Anand Sharma said, "I can only pity the mental bankruptcy of minister Rijiju. He has no understanding of history, there is no proof, no evidence."
"I would say the prime minister should rein in ministers from making such untrue, false and irresponsible statements as have been made in this regard. The account of that period in 1947 has been carefully documented not by one but more than one person who was directly associated with the merger of princely states," Sharma told reporters.
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Noting that the department of states worked on the integration of the princely states, he said then secretary V P Menon worked directly on this and reported to then home minister Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel. "So it was not Nehru as PM, it was the home ministry that was given the responsibility to undertake this onerous task, a national mission, and to supervise the process as per the legal provisions which flowed out of the Indian Independence Act that the British parliament passed and the princely states which wanted to merge had to sign the instrument of accession," Sharma said.
