New Delhi:
A mistake was made in including the name of a living person in the "Hindu martyrs" list sent to the Union home minister, BJP Lok Sabha member Shobha Karandlaje said on Saturday.
Karandlaje, MP from Chikkamagaluru-Udupi in Karnataka, said that the Congress was trying to revive an "old issue" over which she had expressed regret.
"I had expressed my regret at this lapse last year. I had mistakenly included Ashok Pujari's name in the list of BJP and RSS workers who were killed after Siddaramaiah assumed charge as Chief Minister. I had brought this mistake to the notice of the central government," she told PTI over phone.
Karandlaje sparked off a row in 2017 when she included Pujari's name in the list of '23 Hindu martyrs", which she sent to Home Minister Rajnath Singh on July 8, 2017, demanding an NIA probe into the killings of RSS/BJP workers in Karnataka.
Pujari, who lives in a remote village in Udupi district, was attacked by masked people on September 20, 2015 and hospitalised. He had recovered after about a month.
However, accusing the Siddaramaiah government of being "soft" on "Jehadi forces", the BJP has made the killings of Hindu activists a major issue in its political discourse.
"The Congress wants to divert the issue of their unholy electoral understanding with SDPI and PFI. Therefore, they are raking up this old issue," she told PTI.
