Protest gone horribly wrong: Congress workers set themselves on fire while trying to burn Modi effigy

Shimla: What was supposed to be a simple protest went awfully wrong when some overzealous Congress workers in Shimla poured too much of petrol on the effigy of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and ended up catching fire themselves on Monday after lighting it up.

Five Congress activists sustained injuries and one of them was critically injured while burning an effigy of Modi in front of the deputy commissioner’s office in Shimla as part of a statewide protest over the National Herald issue. The critically injured was rushed to the hospital.

Instead of providing a platform for protesting dramatically against the Modi government, the protest turned into a nightmare for the Congress activists as they caught fire while burning the effigy because they were standing too close to it.

The protest was led by state Congress president Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu and senior party leaders and ministers.

Addressing the protesters in front of the state Congress headquarters, Sukhu said the BJP-led NDA government has launched a covert, malicious campaign against the party and senior leaders under its sole agenda “Congress-mukt Bharat” as announced by Modi during the 2014 Lok Sabha elections.

He said the National Herald case was completely politically motivated and misconceived and a part of “vendetta” politics of the NDA government.

He said the case, filed by BJP leader Subramanian Swamy, was aimed at creating sensation and maligning the Congress leadership.

In order to hide its failure to fulfil the poll promises of bringing back black money, containing price rise and providing employment to the unemployed youth, the Modi-led BJP government was trying to divert the attention of the general public by targeting Congress leadership, Sukhu said.

“But such covert attempts would only further strengthen Congress party’s resolve to raise people’s issues with every attack by incredulous agents of BJP government,” he said, adding that the party respects and has full faith in the judicial system.

Meanwhile, state BJP general secretary Rajiv Bindal and chief spokesperson Ganesh Dutt on Monday accused the state government of adopting double standards in dealing with issue of burning of effigy of leaders.

In a statement in Shimla, they said while the police and administration stopped BJP workers from burning an effigy of the Chief Minister and registered cases against them, it remained a mute spectator to burning of effigy of the Prime Minister.

They also demanded a judicial enquiry into the incident, in which five Congress workers received burn injuries while burning the effigy of the Prime Minister.

(With inputs from PTI)