New Delhi,July 26: Says ‘to be apart of Cong you have to join the circus’.SENIOR Congress leader and Rajya Sabha member Mani Shankar Aiyar has done it again.
Speaking at a panel discussion during a book launch on Sunday, the irrepressible Aiyar sparked off another controversy when he said the Congress was a circus and every party man had to be a part of it in his attempts to push himself for greener pastures.
“ We all are there and a kind of fair is held at 24, Akbar Road. If you want to be a part of the Congress, then you have to join that circus. Then only you can be a part of it. Sometimes you achieve success and sometimes you fail but you always keep the faith that one day or the other, you will definitely achieve something,” he said.
The candid observation by a former union minister had the audience in splits but there were frowns at the party headquarters.
Many said Aiyar was arrogant and ungrateful to the party which brought him to the Rajya Sabha even though he lost the Lok Sabha polls in Tamil Nadu.
A senior party general secretary said Aiyar should not have made the remarks as “ many ordinary workers look up to the AICC office with deference, it is a temple for them”. Though Aiyar’s comments left many leaders angry, none of them was willing to come on record.
Even at the party’s daily briefing, Congress spokesperson Manish Tewari downplayed Aiyar’s comments. “ You are all veteran journalists. You have been covering the Congress party for a long time and you know Mr Aiyar very well,” Tewari said.
Considered a 10, Janpath loyalist, Aiyar blamed former Prime Minister P. V. Narasimha Rao for the demolition of the Babri Masjid. He said the demolition of the disputed structure was the biggest disaster of the country.
“ He ( Narasimha Rao) was the one responsible for what happened at the Babri Masjid.
He proved that death is not a necessary pre- condition for rigor mortis to set in,” Aiyar said.
“ It was the biggest disaster in our country. During my Ram- Rahim Yatra, Rao had told me that he had a problem with my definition of secularism. When I asked him what it was, he had told me that I was forgetting that India was a Hindu nation.
That was why there was a rift between the Congress party and Rao,” he added.
Rajiv Gandhi had made Aiyar a minister in his cabinet and Manmohan Singh too had given him a berth in UPA- I. Aiyar was made petroleum minister in 2004 but was shunted out to the sports ministry after he attacked the liberal economic policies of Manmohan Singh.
Just before the Commonwealth Games last year, he said he wished it rained so that the Games were washed out. He stirred another controversy when he accused home minister P. Chidambaram of following a one- eyed policy towards Maoists.
During Rajiv’s tenure Aiyar reportedly said that the only difference between pre- Independent India and now was that earlier people bowed before George V and now before V. George ( a reference to Rajiv’s personal assistant Vincent George).