Congress has caused itself a huge embarrassment in fielding Navinchandra Bandivadekar as its candidate from the Ratnagiri-Sindhudurga constitutency in Maharashtra for the Lok Sabha Polls 2019 – the very man who is found to be associated with Sanatan Samiti they had demonized as a Hindu extremist group last year.
Bandivadekar was accused of backing Vaibhav Raut, an activist of “Hindu Janjagruti Samiti”, an off-shoot of Sanatan Samiti, who was arrested by Maharashtra anti-Terrorist squad in August 2018 at his residence in Nola Sopara.
A big haul of arms and objectionable literature was seized from Raut’s residence. Bandivadkar had organized protests against Raut’s arrests and spoken in solidarity with him. Bandivadkar is seen with Raut in a picture of Sanatan’s official website.
As per the article from the Sanatan Sanstha website, Bandivadekar had joined this morcha for Vaibhav Raut in the capacity of chairman of Akhil Bharatiya Bhandari Samaj Mahasangh.
According to the story, Bandivadekar had said at this meet: “We are surprised that a person striving to protect cows is branded as terrorist. We shall not tolerate injustice against anyone. We shall extend as much support as possible to such person.”
Congress had then gone to town, tweeting that ATS has revealed that Sanatan Sanstha planned to bomb Pune’s @SunburnFestival proving their violent nature and attitude towards India’s dynamic youth culture.
Senior Congress leader P Chidambaran had tweeted thus: “Maharashtra ATS announced the arrest of three men affiliated to radical Hindu outfits. Who rules Maharashtra? The BJP.”
