The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Monday asked former Congress president Sonia Gandhi to return the correspondences of first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru with a host of personalities, to the Prime Ministers’ Museum and Library, saying the historical documents belonged to the country and were not anyone’s personal property.

Lok Sabha Member of Parliament (MP) and BJP spokesperson Sambit Patra cited reports of the PMML’s deliberations on the issue to note that Nehru’s correspondences with Edwina Mountbatten, wife of the last British Viceroy to India, and leaders Jayaprakash Narayan and Jagjivan Ram lay with the erstwhile Nehru Museum and Library Society, which returned them to Sonia Gandhi in 2008.

Patra also raised the issue earlier in the day in the Lok Sabha during Question Hour when Union Culture Minister Gejendra Singh Shekhawat was replying to questions related to his ministry.

Shekhawat noted that Patra’s query, a supplementary, was unrelated to the main question raised in the House by BJP member Saumitra Khan. The minister said he has noted down Patra’s suggestions and appropriate action can be taken in the matter.

The Nehru Museum was expanded to include memorials to all prime ministers and renamed the Prime Ministers’ Museum and Library after the BJP came to power at the Centre. Patra informed the media that 51 cartons of Nehru’s correspondences were given to Sonia Gandhi after approval of the museum’s then director.

However, following a legal opinion, Rizwan Kadri, one of the 29 members of the society tasked with running the PMML, recently wrote to Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi, seeking his help in restoring the papers to the museum’s custody, he added. The BJP leader said Kadri did not receive any reply.

Taking a swipe at the Gandhi family, Patra said these were not personal property of anyone or any family but historical documents part of the “treasure” of India. As Nehru was a member of the family, it suffers from a sense of entitlement over his letters, he alleged. “What were the contents of the letter that the first family felt should not be made public?,” BJP sought to know. 

Patra noted that the digitisation process began in the museum in 2010 but the Gandhi family decided to take back the letters’ possession before that.

In his letter to Rahul Gandhi, Kadri, has also shared a brief note on the legacy of the erstwhile NMML located at the historic Teen Murti House in the heart of Delhi, and excerpts from the minutes of PMML’s Annual General Meeting (AGM) held on February 13, 2024.

“The PMML further informed the AGM that as per records, the private papers of Jawaharlal Nehru, spanning both the pre-Independence and post-Independence periods, were transferred to PMML in several batches starting in 1971.

“This transfer was facilitated by the Jawaharlal Nehru Memorial Fund, acting on behalf of Nehru’s legal heir, Smt. Indira Gandhi, who apparently remained the owner of these documents until her demise in October 1984,” read the minutes quoted in the document attached with the letter.