'BJP using Ramdev to implement its agenda'

A day after Home Minister P Chidambaram launched a scathing attack on yoga guru Baba Ramdev for announcing that he would raise an armed wing of 11,000 young men and women, Information and Broadcasting Minister Ambika Soni on Thursday said violence had no place in the Indian society.

Addressing media persons, Soni said: "India is a proud nation. Mahatma Gandhi uprooted the British empire through power of satyagraha from the Indian soil. Violence has no place in Indian society."
 
She lashed out out at the Bharatiya Janata Party for trying to use Baba Ramdev's shoulder to implement its hidden agenda.

She also took Ramdev to task for staging politics from a non-political

stage.

Paying glowing tributes tributes to Maqbool Fida Hussain and said that it is unfortunate that the great and illustrious painter of his stature had to leave India in the wake of death threats to him from Shiv Sena, RSS and BJP.

"Any country in the world would have given him citizenship and Qatar was the first one to offer that. It is a matter of regret that his last rites would not be held in India," Soni said.

She, however, denied a suggestion that the government of India had not made efforts to woo him back.

"We had made the offer to him on several occasions," she clarified.