Apart from factual mistakes, the Bihar Government’s official website had unkindly words against former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi.
Since the Congress is a partner in the present State Government, the ‘objectionable’ remarks against her were hurriedly removed on Monday.
The text, which was deleted, stated Indira Gandhi was worse than British as far as torturing her opponents.
Under the section modern history on www.gov.bih.nic.in, while making reference of Jay Prakash Narayan and his total revolution movement, the text said, “JP steadfastly and staunchly opposed the autocratic rule of Indira Gandhi and her younger son Sanjay Gandhi. Fearing people’s reaction to his opposition, Indira Gandhi had him (JP) arrested on the eve of declaring National Emergency beginning June 26, 1975. He was put in the Tihar jail, located near Delhi where notorious criminals are jailed. Thus, in Free India, this septuagenarian, who had fought for India’s freedom alongside Indira Gandhi’s father Jawahar lal Nehru, received a treatment that was worse than what the British had meted out to Gandhiji in Champaran in 1917…”
Incidentally, on the same website only a fortnight back Assembly Speaker Vijay Kumarm Chaudhary was shown as Chief Minister and Minister of information and public relations. About a month back, the same website had another misleading information maintaining Sushil Kumar Modi as Deputy CM.
Bihar Education Minister Ashok Kumar Choudhary who also holds the information technology department that runs the Government website, said he would raise this issue with CM Nitish Kumar. Senior Congress leader Prem Chandra Mishra said such offensive remarks of millions of the Congress workers should be omitted.
It is not known if the remarks were deleted following the objection by Congress leaders or the CM did this on his own when it was highlighted by the local media, the removal of the text however, did not go well with the BJP leaders.
Former Deputy CM Sushil Kumar Modi tweeted that the text has been removed at the intervention of Congress leadership from Delhi. “Nitish Kumar under pressure from Sonia Gandhi and lalu Prasad is running a lame duck Government,” he said.
Senior BJP leader Nand Kishore Yadav alleged that the Government under the pressure of its ally was distorting the history. “The history cannot forget the torture meted out to JP by Indira Gandhi during his imprisonment. Nitish and lalu Prasad too know this since both had been on the forefront of the JP movement and had been protesting the ill treatment of JP,” said Yadav, who is chairman of the Assembly’s Public Accounts Committee. He added, “It is unfortunate that Nitish has removed that text from the official website in bid to pursue his politics of compromise.
Education Minister Choudhary who is also president of Bihar Congress praised Indira Gandhi saying she imposed Emergency only to maintain unity and integrity of the country and laid down her life for the case of secularism.
Defending the decision to remove the text from the official website, Deputy CM Tejaswi Yadav said now the situation has changed and an anti-BJP atmosphere is getting stronger.