National tricolour unfurls a new controversy

Asking the Opposition not to try to take political mileage by making such charges, Mahajan said that he would personally take Bharipa Bahujan Mahasangh Member Prakash Ambedkar, who raised the issue, to the RSS headquarters on Republic Day next year and allow him to unfurl the tricolour.

Raising the issue during zero hour, Ambedkar said that an all-party meeting in 1998 at Nagpur had decided that its workers would go to the RSS Headquarters and hoist the tricolour if the organisation on its own failed to do so.

Last year, when the workers of different political parties went there to unfurl the National flag, they were lathicharged and chased away before they could do it, he alleged. He said that this year too, RSS resisted attempts to unfurl the tricolour on its building.

He recalled that the then Home Minister Sardar Vallabh Bhai Patel had reached an agreement in 1949 with the RSS that all political prisoners would be released and that its headquarters would hoist the National flag on Republic Day and Independence Day from January 26, 1950.

Mahajan said that any individual or organisation could hoist National flags on their houses or buildings on Independence Day and Republic Day but he did not see all MPs and politicians flying National flags atop their houses on these occasions.

This did not mean that they were "unpatriotic", he said.

BJP member Vijay Goel said that RSS’ patriotism could not be questioned.’

Sudip Bandopadhyay of Trinamool Congress, which is a partner in the National Democratic Alliance, had a heated argument with members from the CPI(M), when he alleged that the CPI(M) Headquarters in Calcutta never hoisted National flags on these occasions.

He also alleged that the CPI(M) Was "anti-National."