An Army widow-turned-officer, Captain (retired) Shalini Singh joined the Aam Aadmi Party here on Tuesday, with a message to Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the BJP: “leave the armed forces out of politics”.
Capt. Singh, who was 23 years old when her husband Major Avinash Singh Bhadauria died fighting terrorists in the Doda sector of Jammu and Kashmir in September 2001, joined the Army and was commissioned as an officer in 2002.
‘Seen change in Delhi’
Now retired and living in Delhi, Capt. Singh said she chose to join AAP because she had “seen the change in Delhi” under the Arvind Kejriwal government.
Asked about the Prime Minister and BJP leaders speaking about military actions while campaigning for Lok Sabha elections, Capt. Singh said: “The saddest thing that the BJP could do was to play politics with the forces... Till now, we had not done politics in the name of the armed forces. So let them be. When we use them politically, they are also listening and are getting affected.”
She added that “any sensible person” would not fall for the politicisation of the armed forces.
“Playing this card is wrong. When you are using the name of a martyr openly, the family gets affected. Even today when I see my husband’s picture anywhere, I cry. It is wrong to use a martyr’s name or the armed forces for politics. Any sensible person will not fall for it,” she said.
On the issue of nationalism being made into a point of debate this election season, Capt. Singh said: “Anybody who does anything in the best interest of the county, even if you are picking up someone else’s trash and throwing in the bin, is engaging in nationalism. Everyone can’t become the Prime Minister and do nationalism.”
BJYM office-bearer
Apart from Capt. Singh, former Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha Delhi wing office-bearer Shailendra Pandey, who had quit the BJP after 15 years in 2017, joined AAP in the presence of senior leader and Rajya Sabha MP Sanjay Singh.
