The Congress-led protests in Bangalore on Thursday against BJP Lok Sabha member Pratap Simmha, who had issued visitor’s passes to two men who breached the security in the Lower House on Wednesday.
The Congress demanded the arrest of Simmha, who is eyeing a third shot in the upcoming Parliament elections.
Simmha, a 47-year-old former journalist who is a hardliner, had tweaked the spelling of his name from Prathap Simha to Pratap Simmha on numerological advice to better his chances of getting a party ticket and score a hat-trick of wins from the Mysore-Kodagu Lok Sabha constituency.
He is said to have issued visitor’s passes to Manoranjan D, 34, who hails from Mysore, and Sagar Sharma who drives an autorickshaw for a living in Lucknow. They were the youths who jumped into the Lok Sabha from the visitor’s gallery.
The Congress protest led by Karnataka unit vice-president V.S. Ugrappa and media wing chairman Ramesh Babu at Race Course Road, just a stone’s throw away from the Vidhana Soudha, the seat of power, demanded Simmha’s arrest and condemned the BJP.
The protesters were later forcibly removed by police.
Simmha entered politics just before the 2014 Parliament elections and beat Congress heavyweight A.H. Vishwanath by 31,608 votes. He increased his victory margin in the 2019 elections by winning against C.H. Vijayashankar of the Congress-Janata Dal alliance by over 1.4 lakh votes.
Among the 20-odd books he has authored is a biography of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, which Simmha published in 2008 when Modi was Gujarat chief minister.
“I don’t think this unfortunate incident will affect his chance of getting a party ticket. It wasn’t his fault,” a senior BJP functionary told The Telegraph on Thursday.
“The passes are always issued by the personal staff,” said the party functionary, who declined to be named.
The Students Federation of India (SFI), the campus arm of the CPM, has denied the allegation that Manoranjan is its member. Some pro-BJP social media handles had circulated a picture of a youngster who they claimed was Manoranjan.
“Manoranjan has nothing to do with us. The picture is of our Mysore district president T.S. Vijay Kumar who is a lawyer,” state SFI president Amaresh Kadgada said.
