PTI
 
Moradabad, Jun 22: Sonia Gandhi may be the reigning goddess of the Congress Party and sycophantic party men might love to put her on a pedestal giving her demi-God status. But actually portraying the Congress president as Goddess Durga might be taking it a bit too far.

But that is precisely what a district unit of the party in UP has done. A poster adorning the wall of the Moradabad District Congress Committee (DCC) president Ajay Saraswat Soni’s office portrays Gandhi as Durga. Soni is at a loss of words trying to explain the faux pas.

“It is not the handiwork of the party men… a local printer has gifted it… there is no intention of hurting anyone’s religious feelings,” he told DNA.

Interestingly, Sonia’s divine portrayal in a way seems to complete a triumvirate of the ‘teen deviyan’. First, it was the controversial calendar depicting Rajasthan CM Vasundhararaje Scindia as a ‘devi’, then UP CM Mayawati’s admirers have recently come up with a ‘Maya Chaleesa’, a ‘Maya Stuti’ and even a ‘Maya Puran’, no less; and now it is the UPA chairperson who is being bestowed divine eminence.

The Goddess’s eight arms in the impugned poster are labelled after the party’s frontal organisations, like Youth Congress, Mahila Congress, Sewa Dal and so on. Sonia wears a tiara labelled “dharma nirmaan” - an indicator of the party’s ‘soft’ Hindutva, side maybe? The ‘Goddess’ wears a sash which reads “Akhil Bharatiya Congress”. To complete the picture, the demon she is slaying carries the labels ‘atankwad’ (terrorism) and ‘bhrashtachar’ (corruption).

Initial probing by this correspondent revealed that a local firm of Moradabad ‘Vishal Printers’ had prepared the posters for use during the recent state Assembly election. However, the party had not used the material fearing the Election Commission’s wrath. But the DCC president, in an ostensible bid to show his complete loyalty to the party’s presiding deity, put up a sample poster in his office which caught the media’s attention.

It is amusing that Congressmen who would never lose an opportunity to praise Sonia Gandhi as a “tyaag aur balidaan ki devi” (Goddess of sacrifice and renunciation), are shying away at the very mention of the controversy.

“It is not an important issue… it seems to be the handiwork of some miscreants,” said senior Congress leader Pramod Tiwari when questioned about the poster.

"Action would be taken against those responsible for putting up the poster in the Moradabad Congress office," said Janardan Dwivedi, AICC general secretary taking a stern view of the incident. “No Congressman would do such a thing. It must be the mischief of some people with vested interests,” said another party leader Satyadev Tripathi.

BJP leader Lalji Tandon spoke on the subject with a hint of glee. “The Congress high command was very quick to criticise Vasundhara ji over a calendar. Now what does it have to say? Do they accept Sonia Gandhi as a goddess?” he asked.