Farooq Abdullah criticises Congress for not conferring Atal Bihari Vajpayee with Bharat Ratna

New Delhi: Former chief minister of Jammu and Kashmir and National Conference (NC) president Farooq Abdullah on Monday hit out at the Congress party for not conferring former prime minister Atal Bihar Vajpayee with the Bharat Ratna. Vajpayee was presented the country’s highest civilian award at his residence in 2015, few months after the Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led government came to power. “Vajpayee told me that when he made his 1st speech, Nehru went to him and said Atal you will be the Prime Minister of this nation one day. He coming from an RSS background realised that this nation can’t be built by one, but by all. Those who built this in the past can’t be forgotten. The point I have against Congress is that they should have given him the Bharat Ratna when he was in alive and in good health,” Abdullah said at a book launch event in the capital. [caption id=“attachment_4255499” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  File image of Farooq Abdullah. Firstpost/Sameer Yasir[/caption] Abdullah also accused Narendra Modi of not maintaining the dignity of the Prime Minister’s Office and credited former prime ministers Rajiv and Indira Gandhi for where the country stands today. “I think it is the quality of the people in the government. It is nothing else. The quality goes down to the level of forgetting what Nehru contributed to this country, what Indira Gandhi gave to this country. She gave her life. Rajiv Gandhi and other Prime Ministers- did they not give their entire time to build this nation? If we are sitting here, it is because of them. But what is he talking about? That his father and mother were abused? Is that the level of the Prime Minister? I have never used my father and my mother in my language. As Prime Minister of this nation, he has to think in a bigger way,” he stated. On Sunday, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) had approached the Election Commission to lodge a complaint against former Union Minister and Congress leader Vilasrao Muttemwar for his remark on Prime Minister Modi’s father, and Congress leader Raj Babbar’s comparison of the Indian Rupee’s devaluation to Prime Minister Modi’s 96-year-old mother.