Ranchi: The Congress today alleged that senior BJP leader L K Advani had sought to distance himself through his memoirs from all the "controversies that had plagued" the BJP-led NDA government during its five-year rule.

"Be it the Kandahar plane hijack incident or any other issue that Advani had depicted in his memoirs, clearly indicates that he wants to disown such issues considered as blots on NDA regime," AICC spokesman Mohan Prakash told reporters here.

"His (Advani) book is nothing but trying to present himself clean. But the people know that Advani used to say Ram-katha earlier and now he is saying Atma-katha," he said.

Prakash wanted to know why Advani was silent on whether a ransom of $200 million was given as demanded for the release of Mohammad Masood Azhar despite narrating the hijack drama in his book.

On Advani's charges in the memoirs that Veer Savarkar had become the target of a vilification campaign by the Congress and the Communists, Prakash said the Congress had always upheld secular ethos.

On the BJP leader's claim in his book that the Congress had been practising dynastic rule since Independence, Prakash asked Advani to "go through the list of prime ministers since independence."

"Actually, it is Advani and (Atal Bihari) Vajpayee who have been the BJP's only faces since independence," he said.
Source : PTI