New Delhi, July 12 (IANS) Delhi Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) spokesperson Praveen Shankar Kapoor said on Sunday that former Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal and the Aam Aadmi Party’s (AAP) attempt to hold a Shri Sundarkand Paath with the objective of politically exploiting the name of Lord Ram turned out to be a complete failure.

He said that at a pandal in Rohini, where religious events are usually attended by thousands of devotees, Kejriwal’s invitation could not attract even 500 to 600 people despite the AAP pressing buses into service to ferry devotees.

“Not only the people of Delhi, but even AAP workers rejected Kejriwal’s invitation to attend the Shri Sundarkand Paath, thereby, refusing to endorse what they described as his opportunistic display of devotion,” Kapoor added.

The Delhi BJP Spokesperson said that despite Kejriwal announcing the event well in advance, his party colleague and former Delhi Chief Minister Atishi Marlena, former Minister Gopal Rai, along with most of the party’s MLAs, stayed away from the Shri Sundarkand Paath, thereby rejecting Kejriwal’s election-time “Hindu Avatar”.

Kapoor’s attack on Kejriwal’s intention behind organising the religious event came close to Delhi BJP President Harsh Malhotra asserting that the AAP leader embraces Hindutva just before elections to influence Hindu voters.

He said that the people of Delhi and the entire country still vividly remember Kejriwal’s speech in which, quoting his maternal grandmother, he had added that he did not wish to visit a temple that, according to him, had been built after demolishing a mosque.

Malhotra said that the people of Delhi also remember that after the construction of the Shri Ram Temple in Ayodhya in 2024, Kejriwal suddenly embraced Hindutva for political gains.

The then AAP government announced weekly Shri Sundarkand Paath programmes in all 70 Assembly constituencies of Delhi.

However, apart from conducting recitations in around 50 Assembly constituencies on January 16, 2024, only a handful of programmes were held thereafter before the initiative was quietly abandoned, Malhotra added.

In March 2024, the AAP government announced that Shri Sundarkand Paath would be organised simultaneously at 2,600 locations.

However, according to Malhotra, the recitation did not take place at 26 locations.

The Delhi BJP President asked Kejriwal how long he would continue to insult the Hindu faith by displaying what he described as “hypocritical devotion” in the name of Lord Hanuman and Shri Sundarkand Paath.

Malhotra said that Kejriwal, who is staging a drama through Shri Sundarkand Paath in Rohini on Sunday, should explain why he discontinued the series of Shri Sundarkand Paath programmes that he had announced in 2024.

–IANS

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