AGARTALA, July 18 (TIWN): Former CM Manik Sarkar while addressing in party organized protest programme at Agartala said that Congress came in trap of BJP’s jingoistic Hindutva approach before election and thus started running temples to temples in bare bodies.

Sarkar hinted, Congress failed to strike BJP on its failure, affected Lok Sabha Election badly and such attempts of temple runs only benefited BJP. “Being a party president he (Rahul Gandhi) continuously ran from this temple to that temple, even though both party’s Hindutva ideologies are very different”, said Sarkar. “He was going to temple, but which God is sitting in which temple, he doesn’t know. Who was benefited out of such activities of Congress?", asked Manik Sarkar. “The fight should be for secularism and diversity. But Congress also rowed up for Hindutva, profited BJP”, he said. He also said, BJP used social media as tool to propagate the party and malign oppositions' images and they were successful in doing so. Expressing doubts on Balakot surgical strike by India and killing of 250 militants, Tripura’s former Chief Minister Manik Sarkar said that people have to wait to know what happened actually at Balakot, whether any terrorist was killed or not. Citing media reports, Sarkar said when media spot visited nothing was found alike which was claimed by the BJP Govt here but country’s maximum media acknowledged the attack and boasted Prime Minister ahead of the election mixing him with sentiments of nationalism. Sarkar also said, for Pulwama terror attack Home Minister and Prime Minister are responsible at least for their negligence. They didn’t bother about demand of sending soldiers via another route. “From here we can not judge Pulwama attack totally, but after the attack, in the name of nationalism and Hindu-Muslim clash-erupting comments BJP created such a situation that the actual problems of the country sidelined. Modi Govt’s last 5 year’s failures were also sidelined. They did not in very calculative manner to hide Govt’s all failures and to win the Lok Sabha Election”, said Sarkar.