Ex-UP Congress chief Nirmal Khatri says will attend January 22 event: ‘Can fight ideology only ideologically’

The confusion and differences within Congress over the Ram Temple consecration ceremony continue to spill into the open, with former party Faizabad MP Nirmal Khatri declaring on Tuesday that he had accepted the invite to attend the January 22 event.

Pointing to the visit of Congress leaders of Uttar Pradesh to Ayodhya on Monday, Makar Sankranti day, where they took a dip in the Saryu river and offered prayers at both Hanumangarhi and the makeshift Ram temple, Khatri questioned such politics of event vs event, and said this had inspired him to accept the invitation.

“Ram bhakt hona koi paap nahin hai. Mujhe iss bhakti par garv hai (There’s nothing wrong in being a Ram Bhakt. I’m proud to be one),” the 73-year-old Congress veteran posted on social media Tuesday, tagging all senior party leaders, including party national president Mallikarjun Kharge, as well as current state party chief Ajay Rai and others, many of whom were in Ayodhya a day before.

The president of the UP Congress between 2012 and 2016, Khatri added, “Since there is no instruction from the Congress party that members should not participate in the programme on the 22nd — only our supreme leaders have expressed their inability to attend the invitation on the 22nd — so I will participate in it, and have accepted the invitation.”

He added that the Congress can fight against any ideology only by strengthening its own ideological foundation, not by organising an event to “counter” its opponents’ — which, he said, it anyway could not match. It was regrettable that no one was paying any attention to this aspect, Khatri wrote.

“As a true Congressman, I urge the leaders of UP that we can do this (fight the Sangh ideology) only by leaving out the politics of the event, by