Criminal plaint against Gadkari over Vivekananda remark

A complaint was filed on Tuesday in a local court seeking penal action against Bharatiya Janata Party president Nitin Gadkari for "hurting" religious sentiments of lakhs of followers of Swami Vivekananda by comparing him with mob boss Dawood Ibrahim.

Chief Judicial Magistrate L G Chudasama, after hearing the complainant, reserved the order till November 9.

The complaint filed by advocate Harshad Bhatt, who is also the spokesperson of Jamnagar district Congress, has also sought appropriate criminal action against BJP national spokesperson Nirmala Sitharaman, who, as alleged in the complaint, had endorsed the comments made by Gadkari.

"By comparing Swami Vivekananda with the most wanted criminal of India Dawood Ibrahim, he has hurt the religious feelings of millions of his followers worldwide," Bhatt said while citing comments made by Gadkari on Sunday at a function in Bhopal.

Bhatt demanded penal action under sections 295 (deliberate and malicious acts, intended to outrage religious feelings) and 298 (uttering, words etc, with deliberate intent to wound the religious feelings of any person) of the IPC.

"As per psychology, if we can compare the IQ level of Swami Vivekananda and that of Dawood Ibrahim, then it could have been almost the same. But Vivekananda used it in nation building, brotherhood and spiritualism, while Dawood used that in excelling in crime world," Gadkari had said.