New Delhi
Putting to rest speculation, the BJP today fielded controversial Hindutva leader Sadhvi Pragya Singh Thakur from the Bhopal Lok Sabha seat in Madhya Pradesh against an equally controversial Congress leader Digvijay Singh within hours of her joining the party.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The decision to \nfield Pragya, an accused in the 2008 Malegaon blast case, has already \ndrawn criticism. Belonging to Bhind district, she is known for making \nprovocative statements and has long been associated with the Sangh, the \nBJP\u2019s ideological fountainhead.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Pragya replaces sitting Bhopal MP\n Alok Sanjar, who said he would ensure her victory. \u201cNo allegation was \nproved against her. A woman was harassed. Now it is the time for \nrevenge,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Singh may have been trying to woo Hindu voters\n in the constituency that has been sending a saffron leader to \nParliament since 1989, but the BJP believes Pragya\u2019s presence will not \njust influence Bhopal but also adjoining areas in its favour.Earlier, \nthere was speculation that the BJP might field Union Minister Uma \nBharti, who too has voluntary opted out of the 2019 electoral fray. As \nsomeone who had defeated Singh from the constituency, Bharti she had \nkalready \u201cdone her part in removing him from power and now the people \nwould defeat him\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
About 4.5 lakh of the 18 lakh voters of the \ncity are Muslims. Pragya said she was waging a \u201cdharmayudh\u201d against \nSingh.In the past decade, Pragya and Lt Col Prasad Shrikant Purohit have\n been portrayed as the \u201csaffron terror\u201d face by the Congress-led UPA \ngovernment for their alleged role in the Malegaon blasts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Six \npersons were killed and 100 injured when an explosive device went off \nnear a mosque in Malegaon on September 29, 2008. The blast was allegedly\n carried by right-wing outfit Abhinav Bharat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Pragya was given a \nclean chit by the National Investigation Agency , but the trial court \nrefused to discharge her from the case. The court dropped the charges \nunder the Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act against her and she\n is now being tried under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act.\n\n<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
New DelhiPutting to rest speculation, the BJP today fielded controversial Hindutva leader Sadhvi Pragya Singh Thakur from the Bhopal Lok Sabha seat in Madhya Pradesh against an equally controversial Congress leader Digvijay Singh within hours of her joining the party. The decision to field Pragya, an accused in the 2008 Malegaon blast case, has already […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":59423,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[312],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-59422","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-india"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59422","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=59422"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59422\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":59424,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59422\/revisions\/59424"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/59423"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=59422"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=59422"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=59422"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}