As Madhya Pradesh gears for polls later this year, the state Congress unit has taken a leaf out of Karnataka’s book, attacking the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) over the toppling statues in the famed Mahakaleshwar temple corridor due to strong winds, attaching the “40 per cent commission” barb to the Shivraj Singh Chouhan-led government levelling corruption allegations.
Six out of seven idols, around 10 feet tall, built to portray Saptarishis or the seven big rishis (saints) installed at the Mahakal Lok corridor, at the Mahakaleshwar temple premises in Madhya Pradesh’s Ujjain city, collapsed and suffered damages due to gusty winds on Sunday (May 28).
Amid fanfare, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had inaugurated the first phase of the Mahakal Lok corridor project in October 2022.
The Congress was quick to hit out at the BJP, with the Congress’s in-charge for Madhya Pradesh, J P Agarwal, calling it a ‘scam’ in the Ujjain temple.
J P Agarwal on Tuesday said the Chouhan government “had played with the faith of crores of Indians” by “indulging in corruption” while building the statues, reported The Indian Express.
“In Karnataka, we gave the slogan of ‘40% sarkara’. A similar scam has come to light in Madhya Pradesh. That too in the Mahakal Mandir of Ujjain. The BJP didn’t keep even the sacred Mahakal away from its loot. There couldn’t have been bigger loot in the name of religion. Bhagwaan ko bhi nahin choda (They didn’t spare even god),” Agarwal said.
Meanwhile, state Congress chief and former Chief Minister Kamal Nath has constituted his own seven-member inquiry comittee, which includes five sitting MLAs from the state.
Kamal Nath in a tweet on Thursday said, “Lord Mahakal is the centre of faith of the entire Hindu society. The way the idols of Saptarishis fell in Mahakal Lok, and now there is news of damage to other deity idols is also coming to the fore, revealing the attitude of the Shivraj government which seems to be completely covering up the matter.”
“Instead of conducting an independent and fair inquiry into the matter, the ministers of Shivraj government are giving clean chit to their own government without any investigation. The Congress party has already made its stand clear that the Mahakal Lok scam should be investigated by a sitting High Court judge. If the government does not accept this demand, then a clear message will be sent to the public that the Shivraj government’s mentality is to hurt the faith of Hindus and give full protection to the scamsters,” he added.
Both the Congress and the BJP have been fighting over taking credit for the project, with the Shivraj government crediting itself for conceptualising the project in 2017 for Rs 95 crore, and Kamal Nath in August 2019 saying that the Congress government had drew a sketch of the Mahakal Temple and allocated Rs 300 crore for it.
Meanwhile, Former minister and MLA Sajjan Singh Verma, who is part of the committee, alleged that the idols are “made in China and are of weak quality”.
“The BJP keeps shouting at the top of its voice to not use Chinese products, but to make products related to our gods, they used such low-quality material,” he said.
He further added that the party was not questioning the use of fibre-reinforced plastic (FRP), but the “material used to make the frames were of poor quality,” he alleged.
He said that the idols should have been made of stones, given the religious importance, as having broken idols at religious sites is “forbidden”.
Meanwhile, the BJP has hit back, with the Minister of Urban Development and Housing Bhupendra Singh saying that the decision to have FRP idols was taken during the Congress regime.
“There is no corruption. The Congress is doing dirty politics. They have not given a single evidence of corruption. And if the Congress is making this allegation, the project was under it too and hence it is an acceptance by them that they did corruption. We did our work honestly and with high standards,” Singh said, as quoted by IE.