The Congress tried to politicise the Bangalore bomb blast incident with its senior leader Shakeel Ahmad tweeting that the explosion outside the BJP office will benefit the Opposition party in Karnataka Assembly polls.
While the BJP flayed the Congress leader’s statement and accused the Centre of soft-pedalling terrorism, the Congress distanced itself from Ahmad’s statement.
“If the blast near BJP’s office in Bangalore is a terror attack, it will certainly help the BJP politically on the eve of election,” Ahmad tweeted.
Significantly, the Congress is trying to use the social media for promoting party’s image and recently constituted a group headed by Dipender Hooda for the purpose.
Congress general secretary Janardan Dwivedi snubbed Ahmad and said, “We all know terrorism is a national issue or problem. And not only that, to some extent it is an international problem. We do not view the problem in terms of political benefit or loss.”
He said that the problem of terrorism should be a concern for all citizens and should be faced unitedly. “Whatever I am saying, I am saying on behalf of the party,” he asserted.
Minister of State RPN Singh also made similar statement saying that act of terrorism should not be linked to politics and urged all political parties to fight it unitedly.
Finding himself in the centre of controversy and isolated within the party, Ahmad later tried to do damage control by claiming that his tweet was misunderstood by the BJP leaders as he only meant that the Opposition will get sympathy votes after explosion outside its office.
However, this did not convince the BJP with party president Rajnath Singh charging the Centre for lacking in efforts to fight terror and said that the “terror act” appeared to be the job of some sleeper cells. Refusing to comment on Ahmed’s contention that the blast would help the BJP, he said, “I don’t believe this has been stage-managed by somebody. Acts of terror are taking place across the country.”