Congress general secretary and former Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Digvijay Singh on Saturday took a pot shot at Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)’s prime ministerial nominee Narendra Modi for not knowing that freedom fighter Bhagat Singh had never been imprisoned on the Andamans.
Referring to Modi’s gaffe during a speech in Ahmedabad on Wednesday, Singh pointed out that it was VD Savarkar who had been imprisoned in the jail on the islands, while Bhagat Singh was lodged only in the Delhi jail.
“It is strange that a man who aspires to be the country’s Prime Minister has such a poor knowledge about the people who laid down their lives for the country,” he said.
Modi once again fumbled with historical facts when he said in his speech that Bhagat Singh had spent a long time incarcerated on the Andaman islands.
Notably, when Modi confused Martyr Bhagat Singh with VD Savarkar who had been imprisoned in the jail on the islands, it was not the first time he tweaked the history books.
With the race to the 2014 lok Sabha elections getting more intense, Modi's fiery speeches fraught with factual errors are hogging the limelight. At rally in Patna last year, Modi made a series of mistakes.
"When we are reminded of the Gupta Dynasty we are reminded of Chandragupta's rajneeti," he said at the rally held on October 27, 2013.
Whereas the fact is that Chandragupta was of Maurya dynasty, not of Gupta dynasty.
It did not stop here. At the same rally, Modi went on to add, "Alexander's army conquered the entire world, but was defeated by the Biharis. That's the might of this land."
Whereas the fact is that Alexander's army never crossed Ganga and he wasn't defeated by the Biharis.
On the same day, Modi triggered another storm in the social media. This time, he said, "Taxlia, the learning hub of ancient times, was in Bihar."
Whereas the fact is that Taxila, which is in Pakistan, is nowhere near Bihar.
later, in the same month Addressing a gathering after the inauguration of a hospital in Gujarat's Kheda district,
he said, "Syama Prasad Mookerjee was a revolutionary. He died in 1930 in london. But the Congress never bothered to bring back his ashes to the country."
The person Modi was referring to was Shyamji Krishna Verma, a freedom fighter, lawyer and a journalist.
Mookerjee was the founder of the Jan Sangh, which later became the BJP.
He died in a Jammu and Kashmir prison on June 23, 1953 - 45 days after being detained for entering the State without a permit.
At a rally in Punjab in June 2013, Modi had held India's first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru responsible for Mookerjee's death.