BOMBAY, 10 May 2005 — Venting his anger at the Congress high command for inducting former Shiv Sena leader Sanjay Nirupam into the Congress fold, federal minister for sports, Sunil Dutt, criticized the decision of the Congress leaders at a public rally, stating that Congress party President Sonia Gandhi was misled and given incorrect information about the background of Nirupam.
Dutt said that Mrs. Gandhi would not have agreed to take a tainted person like Nirupam into the Congress, had she been given proper and correct information about him. “It is our right to bring to the attention of the Congress president that she had been misinformed about a person, who had earlier spat venom against the party. No one can take our right to speak out,” he said.
Dutt who had defeated Nirupam in last year’s Lok Sabha election questioned the credibility and the induction into the party of a former Shiv Sena leader, who had called the great thespian Dilip Kumar a “traitor”. Is a person who calls a respected personality of the film industry a traitor, fit to be taken into the party, Dutt asked.
