Shi­ro­mani Akali Dal Delhi led by Paramjit Singh Sarna has la­belled BJP’s Pragya Thakur can­di­da­ture as a move to­wards turn­ing mod­ern In­dia into a theo­cratic state whereas Dal Khalsa sees it is a case of dou­ble stan­dards of the Modi gov­ern­ment on ter­ror­ism.

Leav­ing noth­ing to imag­i­na­tion about its in­ten­tions of grad­u­ally but sys­tem­at­i­cally con­vert­ing In­dia into a one-re­li­gion coun­try, the Bharatiya Janta Party fielded ter­ror-ac­cused on bail Sad­hvi Pragya Thakur as its can­di­date for the Bhopal par­lia­men­tary con­stituency.

The Shi­ro­mani Akali Dal Delhi state­ment stated that,” The BJP’s choice of ter­ror ac­cused Sad­hvi Pragya Thakur is not only an act of des­per­a­tion but a glar­ing warn­ing about In­di­a’s dark fu­ture in the hands of the Sangh Pari­var.”

Call­ing upon right-think­ing peo­ple to sub­vert the de­signs of the BJP, the party chief Paramjit Singh Sarna cau­tioned, “They would have no hes­i­ta­tion giv­ing party ticket to butch­ers of mi­nori­ties in In­dia — be it Sikhs, Chris­tians or Mus­lims. They would have no hes­i­ta­tion of­fer­ing Lok Sabha op­por­tu­ni­ties to the sup­pressers of the down­trod­den classes and castes”

“When you in­vite peo­ple like the Sad­hvi into the Lok Sabha, you send out a clear mes­sage to ma­jori­tar­ian the­o­rists and ter­ror­ists about po­ten­tial re­wards for un­leash­ing atroc­i­ties on mi­nori­ties,” he added.

Dal Khalsa leader Har­cha­ran­jit Singh Dhami in a state­ment to the me­dia said, “Pragya Singh Thakur’s can­di­da­ture is a re­minder that the BJP was de­ter­mined to make the coun­try a Hindu In­dia. The BJP is hell bent to play the Hin­dutva card to re­tain power, come what may.”

“For the BJP, anti-mi­nor­ity faces like her are as­sets which help it to con­sol­i­date ma­jor­ity votes. Po­lar­iz­ing or di­vid­ing the coun­try on com­mu­nal and caste lines has al­ways been BJP’s agenda but now it has come to the fore even more brazenly un­der the tute­lage of Modi and Shah,” he added.

Speak­ing of dou­ble stan­dards, the Dal Khalsa leader dwelt on the irony that on the one hand the In­dian state wants the whole world and the UNSC to de­clare Azhar Ma­sood as a global ter­ror­ist and on the other the right wing ex­trem­ist party the BJP is ho­n­our­ing Hin­dutva ter­ror-ac­cused Sad­hvi Pragya Thakur with nom­i­na­tion to the In­dian Par­lia­ment.

Giv­ing her nom­i­na­tion is like the Con­gress party ho­n­our­ing the Pandey broth­ers with nom­i­na­tion to the Ut­tar Pradesh As­sem­bly af­ter they hi­jacked an air­craft in favour of the then Con­gress chief In­dira Gandhi, in the late sev­en­ties of the last cen­tury.

Har­cha­ran­jit Singh Dhami taunted the BJP al­liance part­ner Shi­ro­mani Akali Dal by ask­ing, “Can the Akali Dal dare to field any Khal­is­tani mil­i­tant as their of­fi­cial nom­i­nee?”