“Jan Lok Pal activist Anna Hazare's “peace of mind” has been ruined by his own team. If he accepts this, his mind will be pure,” Shiv Sena chief Bal Thackeray said in an editorial in his party's mouthpiece Saamna on Thursday.
Mr. Thackeray said Mr. Hazare's team members were themselves responsible for the controversies surrounding them; not the “gang of four” the social activist was blaming.
“Keeping his vow of silence, Mr. Hazare has declared that a gang of four in the Union Cabinet has launched a malicious campaign against his aides. Mr. Anna's parallel government is doing somersaults. By its flip-flops it is trying to deceive people. Controversies surrounding the honest, intellectual and able friends of Anna Hazare are exploding like a row of firecrackers,” Mr. Thackeray said.
He asked if people were outraged by Prashant Bhushan's “traitorous” stand on Kashmir, how could someone else be blamed for it. Kiran Bedi, on the other hand, had delivered a “volley of lies and deceit.”
“If A. Raja and Suresh Kalmadi say that they would return the money, would it fit within the ambit of the Jan Lokpal,” the Sena chief asked.
Even Swami Agnivesh, who was formerly part of Mr. Hazare's “parallel government,” questioned the books of the non-governmental organisation run by Arvind Kejriwal and Manish Sisodia.
Therefore, Mr. Hazare and his team should not lay the blame on the “gang of four.” “Anna's peace of mind is destroyed by his own people,” Mr. Thackeray said.
