BJP MP Pragya Singh Thakur is slated to deliver a lecture to fellow parliamentarians at an event organised by the Lok Sabha Secretariat to mark the International Yoga Day on 21 June, according to an official notification.
This announcement, however, triggered sharp reactions, with a Congress leader even questioning if Prime Minister Narendra Modi had “changed his mind” about the parliamentarian who had hailed Mahatama Gandhi’s assassin a patriot.
The LS Secretariat, in its tentative schedule, has listed Thakur's lecture on “Yoga: A Way of Life” at 12 pm, which will be conducted online.
Thakur is one of the accused in the 2008 Malegaon blast case.
In May 2019, Thakur had referred to Mahatma Gandhi's assassin Nathuram Godse as a patriot. However, she had subsequently apologised and withdrawn the statement.
Following her remarks, she was expelled from the 21-member Parliamentary Consultative Committee on Defence and also barred from BJP's parliamentary party meetings.
Back then, Modi had said: "The comments on Gandhi and Godse are terrible, despicable, and condemnable. This sort of mentality is not for civilised society. Those who do this should think 100 times in future. She has apologised, that's fine. Lekin main apne man se maaf nahi kar paoonga (But I cannot forgive her from my heart).”
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