It is wrong to call Anna corrupt: Anil Shastri

NEW DELHI: Three days after the AICC projected that Anna Hazare was "steeped in corruption from head to toe", a senior party leader today said it was wrong to call Hazare corrupt as people see him as a crusader against corruption.

The remark posted on Twitter by Anil Shastri, a Special Invitee to Congress Working Committee, comes today after a party spokesperson had on last Sunday questioned the credentials of Hazare quoting from an old judicial commission report that had stumbled upon financial irregularities in organsations associated with Hazare.

The very next day, the party, however made a course correction with senior party leaders saying in private that Congress will not engage in personal attack against Hazare from henceforth.

The course correction took place after a meeting of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Rahul Gandhi in the AICC headquarters after the national flag hoisting on August 15.

The tweet by Shastri, the former editor of party mouthpiece Congress Sandesh, says " it was wrong to call Anna Hazare corrupt. People's perception about him is not so. They see him as a crusader against corruption."

Shastri is currently the chairman of 'Hindi Vibagh' of the party after being replaced as the editor of the party mouthpiece in the backdrop of an earlier controversial editorial by him over the government's decision to send three ministers to airport to receive the Yoga Guru Ramdev.

Amid conflicting statements from Congress on Anna Hazare, this is first public admission by any senior party leader that making any personal attack Hazare on the issue of corruption was not politically correct.