The Hindu : National : `Congress has appropriated Tricolour'

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Friday, Sep 17, 2004

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National

`Congress has appropriated Tricolour'

By Lyla Bavadam

YAVATMAL, SEPT. 16. The Bhartiya Janata Party leader, Uma Bharti, announced her intention to take the Tricolour issue to a new level by challenging the right of the Congress to use "a flag that looked like the Tricolour" as a party flag.

She said she would ask her party president, Venkaiah Naidu, to initiate a national debate on a code of conduct for the use of the Tricolour and on the Congress' use of a "Tricolour look-alike."

Ms. Bharti was addressing the press in Yavatmal district in the Vidarbha region of Maharashtra on the sixth day of her `tiranga yatra' from Hubli to Jallianwala Bagh. She also spoke of the possibility of taking legal steps to prevent the Congress from using their party flag. "No one political party should have rights over the Tricolour. It should be snatched away from the Congress," she said.

`Emotional blackmail'

Claiming that post-Independence, leaders like Rajagopalachari had also insisted on this, Ms. Bharti said the Congress had appropriated the flag and used it to emotionally blackmail the people.

"When the Congress party flag is mounted on a vehicle and flapping in the wind, no one can see that there is no chakra on it and that it is only the party symbol. The common person assumes that the Congress flag and the Tricolour are one and the same. This is an unethical advantage."

Flays vote bank politics

Asked about the Vishwa Hindu Parishad's threat to demolish the tomb of Afzal Khan in western Maharashtra becoming an issue prior to the election, she said, "There should be no vote bank politics in the name of Shivaji and Afzal Khan." (The attempt was foiled by the police on September 12 and more than 500 VHP activists were arrested.)

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