After 'Indian Variant' remark, Kamal Nath kicks up fresh row with 'Bharat Badnam' remark

BHOPAL: Five days after he was booked by Bhopal Police Crime Branch for his controversial “Indian Variant” coronavirus remark, the former Madhya Pradesh chief minister and present state Congress president Kamal Nath kicked up a fresh political row on Friday by saying, “India isn’t Mahan (great) but a Badnam (infamous) country.”

“Mai toh kah raha hoon ki Bharat mahan nahi, Bharat badnam hai (I’m saying that India isn’t great, but India is infamous). All nations have banned the entry of Indian people due to the COVID-19 pandemic surge in India. I’d said this in Ujjain recently and I’m repeating it again. Someone rang me recently from New York and told me that people there aren’t boarding cabs driven by Indians,” Nath said at a press conference in Satna district on Friday.

While accusing the Narendra Modi government at the centre and the Shivraj Singh Chouhan government in MP of failing to timely contain the COVID-19 pandemic’s current wave, Nath said, “during my chief ministerial tenure, I had started a campaign against adulteration, but the ruling BJP workers are now selling ventilators, injections, oxygen, and hospital beds.”

“Nothing was done to stop the second wave of the pandemic, despite being alerted by experts. If anyone asks questions about it, that person is called a traitor and FIR is lodged against him,” said Nath referring to the recent FIR lodged against him at the Bhopal Crime Branch on ruling BJP leaders’complaint.

On Sunday, the Bhopal Crime Branch had lodged a case against him u/s 188 IPC and 54 of Disaster Management Act on the complaint of ruling BJP leaders.

The BJP leaders had alleged in their complaint that through his “Indian Variant” remark made at a digital press conference and later at a media briefing in Ujjain, the ex-CM and present Leader of Opposition had tarnished the image of the country and also created fear among people of the state.

Reacting to Nath’s ‘Bharat Badnam,’ remark, chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan said, “Such remarks suggest that the ex-CM has lost his mental balance, after losing power in the state. After such remarks, he isn’t worthy of being an Indian citizen. Now, the Congress national president Sonia Gandhi needs to come clear whether she is supportive of her MP state party chief’s recent remarks or not.”