Context of Pranab Mukherjee's visit to Nagpur last year not right: Jairam

Senior Congress leader Jairam Ramesh Saturday said Pranab Mukherjee's visit to RSS headquarters last year "raised questions on the former president's motive" and that the "context of the visit" was "wrong".

"I wrote him a letter saying that I did not expect him to go. The context in which he went to Nagpur was wrong according to me. Many people have gone to Nagpur...There has been contact between the RSS and Congress and there is nothing wrong in maintaining contact...Questions are to be raised behind the motive of his visit and its context and what he said there.

"If he had used the opportunity to speak on what Sardar Patel, who is now their favourite leader, had said and written about the RSS...about its background and history, then I would have agreed he was very courageous. But he need not have gone to Nagpur to say what he did, he could have issued a press release," Ramesh said at a book launch here.

Mukherjee had visited Nagpur in July 2018 for the RSS event. Many Congress leaders, including his daughter Sharmistha Mukherjee, had questioned the visit.