A day after the BJP’s general secretary Ram Madhav questioned Hamid Ansari’s integrity, the Modi government is believed to have said sorry to the Vice President.
Madhav, in his tweet on Sunday, had questioned why Ansari was absent from the International Yoga Day event at the Rajpath in Delhi. His tweet prompted a huge twitter backlash with social media users condemning both Madhav, a former RSS spokesperson, as Narendra Modi’s government at the centre for their ‘aattempt to communalise’ the office of India’s Vice President.
According to a report in Indian Express, a senior member of Modi’s cabinet has communicated a message of regret to Hamid Ansari.
Shripad Naik, Union Minister of State for Ayush, on Monday was seen giving series of interviews to several media houses trying to limit the damage caused by a senior BJP leader.
Citing protocol Naik had said, “The Vice President was not invited for the event. That’s because the Prime Minister could not be the chief guest at a function, where the Vice President (ranked above the PM) was present. Ram Madhav may not have been aware of this protocol. We apologise for that, it was inadvertent. In any case, he has deleted the tweet now. So the matter is over.”
Meanwhile, the news agency PTI reported that Madhav told reporters in Jammu that “As far as the tweet is concerned, it was withdrawn and the matter is closed there and ends there.’
Madhav’s criticism for Ansari assumed significant given his clout both in the RSS and the BJP.