Govt 'having fun' selling national assets built by Nehru: Shiv Sena

Mumbai: In a sharp attack on the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) at the Centre, the Shiv Sena on Sunday said that the 'long-term vision' of the late Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru saved the country from the current economic disaster it is reeling under and the present government is now enjoying selling the national assets he created.

"The BJP government may have differences with Sonia Gandhi, Rahul or Priyanka, but why this hatred for Nehru? The institutions created by Nehru are being sold by the present government to give a fillip to the economy," said Sena MP and Chief Spokesperson Sanjay Raut.

His comments came over the dropping of photos of India's first Prime Minister Nehru and the country's first Education Minister Maulana Abul Kalam Azad from a promotional released by the Union Education Ministry's Indian Council of Historical Research (ICHR) on the 75th year celebrations of India's Independence, sparking a row recently.

Dwelling on Nehru's nation-building legacy, Raut asserted that "the government is now having fun selling off the national assets created by him, otherwise the country would be starving, people would be jobless and there would have anarchy".

"You should be forever indebted to Nehru but instead, you have wiped out his very role in the Freedom Movement. Why so much animosity towards Nehru. You must reply to the country," Raut said. Slamming the Central government for the act in his weekly column 'Rokthok' in the party newspaper 'Saamna' Group, Raut said without the contributions of Nehru and Azad, the history of Indian Freedom Movement "will never be complete".

"Only those who cannot make history consider it a bravado to erase the history of others. Those who kept far away from and never participated in the Freedom Struggle are now trying to keep out one of the heroes of the Independence Movement. This is not proper," he said.