Stamp row: Congress escalates attack on Centre, demands apology

NEW DELHI:The Congress and the BJP-led government engaged themselves in another round of verbal jousting on Wednesday over issuance and withdrawal of postal stamps in honour of the nation's leaders. The Congress demanded an apology over the Modi government's decision to discontinue postal stamps on Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi, even while communications minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said, "only one family cannot get this honour."

Congress chief spokesperson Randeep Surjewala alleged Prasad had undertaken an exercise in brazening it out through "white lies and deliberate misleading… blinded by his hatred for Congress and his party's inadequate contribution to nation building. He seems to have become a victim of his own rhetoric."

Prasad had earlier in the day said that an advisory committee had suggested replacing the picture of Indira Gandhi with that of Yoga on inland letters, but no final decision was taken yet. "In the definitive stamp series, the focus was (so far) on one family... though other names were there. Mahatma Gandhi, Maulana Azad, Dr Ambedkar, Dr Bhabha were there," he said. The minister said the new series is 'inclusive' and seeks to encapsulate the contribution of all the leading lights of the freedom movement. "Congress has been in power for so many years, but Maulana Azad has not figured in definitive stamp till date. I would like to ask Congress if Maulana Azad did not deserve to be included...Dr Rajendra Prasad, Swami Vivekananda...Sardar Patel figured once in 2001 than disappeared," Prasad said.

In response, Surjewala said that Prasad had "misled" the nation and "lied" on record. "Congress when in government released stamps in the name of many people who were either political adversaries or held contrarian ideology." Surjewala said Congress governments had issued stamps among others in the names of Balgangadhar Tilak, Madan Mohan Malviya, Subhash Chandra Bose, Ashutosh Mukherjee (father of Shyama Prasad Mookerjee), Sardar Patel, Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, Ambedkar, Maharana Pratap, Gurugobind Singh, Savarkar, Lenin, JP, Raj Narain and UPA government never withdrew stamps issued on Hedgewar and EMS, "though it was bitterly opposed to their ideology."