After senior party leaders Mani Shankar Aiyar and AICC general secretary Digvijaya Singh,as well as party mouthpiece Congress Sandesh,it was the turn of senior leader Vasant Sathe to dub as ridiculous the visit of four senior ministers to the airport to receive yoga guru Ramdev on June 1.
It was not proper. The whole thing was ridiculous as the government behaviour oscillated like a pendulum from laying the red carpet to the crackdown by the police. One does not understand the rationale, said the 86-year-old leader.
Dubbing the handling of the whole issue as making a self-goal, Sathe said he had never heard of any such incident during the tenure of Pandit Nehru,Indira Gandhi or Rajiv Gandhi.
Digvijaya Singh has already said he was saddened that four ministers led by Pranab Mukherjee went to the airport to receive Ramdev,while the editorial in the latest issue of Congress Sandesh also confirmed the divide between the party and the government on the issue.
The AICC has tried to wriggle out of the matter by saying the editorial was the personal view of editor Anil Shastri,a special invitee to the Congress Working Committee.
On Ramdevs demand for a directly-elected prime minister,Sathe said he had also campaigned around three decades ago for a presidential form of government in the country,but the idea found no takers in the political class.