Remarks by Anil Vij against Gandhi his personal views: BJP

New Delhi: BJP today condemned Haryana Minister and senior party leader Anil Vij for his remarks critical of Mahatma Gandhi and said these were his personal views. “The party does not associate itself with his remarks. These are his personal comments. We condemn them,” its national secretary Shrikant Sharma said.

He claimed that Vij has withdrawn his remarks. Gandhi, he said, is an icon for BJP and the country as such and his values are held in highest esteem by the saffron party. He also hit out at Congress over its attack on BJP, saying it has no moral right to speak about the father of the nation as it only “misused” his name and photograph all these years while the BJP government under Prime Minister Narendra Modi has “promoted” his philosophies of Khadi and swachhta.

Vij today courted a controversy with remarks that Mahatma Gandhi’s image did not help Khadi and caused devaluation of the currency, sparking widespread outrage. The senior BJP leader in Haryana, who is not a stranger to controversies, said it was good that Gandhi’s image has been replaced with that of the Prime Minister in the calendar and diary of Khadi and Village Industries Commission (KVIC) as Modi is a “better brand” and went on to add that Gandhi’s image would be removed gradually from the currency notes too.