'Incorrect' Indian map row in Belagavi: D K Shivakumar says posters will be removed

BJP leader Sudhanshu Trivedi

Reacting to the controversy over the alleged misrepresentation of the Indian map on the posters displayed by the Congress at the Congress Working Committee meeting in Karnataka's Belagavi, Karnataka Deputy chief minister D K Shivakumar, who is also the Congress Karnataka unit president, said the posters would be removed if there is any mistake.

Hours ahead of the Congress Working Committee meeting in Karnataka's Belagavi, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) attacked the Congress over a distorted map of India on a banner at the venue.

"Some leaders might have made some mistake, we are removing everything. Don't try to pick a small stone in the curd... We have done according to Indian tradition and values of those days... BJP is there to attack us, they can't digest. There is no medicine for jealousy. Let them do what they want..." Shivakumar  reporters in Belagavi, according to news agency PTI.

The saffron party accused the Congress of “appeasement politics” and asked whether it was done at the instance of George Soros, a Hungarian-American philanthropist, whom the BJP has accused of sponsoring Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s critics.

Leading the charge for BJP, Sudhanshu Trivedi said the map on the banner at the venue of the Congress Working Committee meeting excluded Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK) and Aksai Chin from India.

“...the picture about the Congress working with the forces bent to destroy India is quite clear now…and this is not just one incident,” added Sudhanshu Trivedi.

Trivedi said it was not just about maps and claimed the Congress supported people who spoke about cutting the “Chicken’s Neck” or Siliguri Corridor—a narrow strip of land in West Bengal connecting northeastern states with the rest of India—during the protests against the Citizen (Amendment) Act or CAA. “What was the relation between Chicken’s Neck during the CAA protests,” asked the BJP leader.

The Congress is holding an extended CWC meeting on Thursday in Belagavi and a public meeting on December 27, as part of the centenary celebrations of the 1924 Indian National Congress session that was presided over by Mahatma Gandhi.

As part of the government programme to commemorate the occasion, there will be the unveiling of the statue of Mahatma Gandhi on December 27 at the premises of Suvarna Vidhana Soudha, by Leader of Opposition in Rajya Sabha and AICC President Mallikarjun Kharge and Leader of Opposition in Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi.