Congress leader Jairam Ramesh on Thursday handed Defence Minister Rajnath Singh a copy of Vallabhbhai Patel’s daughter Maniben Patel’s original diary entries in Gujarati, asserting that they contain no reference to Singh’s claim that Jawaharlal Nehru wanted to construct the Babri Masjid using public funds.
Ramesh met Singh outside Parliament’s Makar Dwar and presented him with the Gujarati pages alongside a Hindi translation.
When Ramesh urged him to read the entries, Singh responded that he did not know Gujarati, adding that the BJP already had an English version.
The Congress has been challenging Singh’s remarks, made last week during a public address in Gujarat’s Vadodara district, claiming Nehru had proposed state funding for the mosque but was stopped by Sardar Patel.
The party has accused the defence minister of circulating “falsehoods” and urged him to apologise.
Ramesh said the diary entries published in the 2025 book Samarpit Padchhayo Sardarno by C.A. R.S. Patel (“Aaresh”) do not support Singh’s statement. “There is a huge difference between the original diary entry and what Rajnath Singh and his fellow ‘distorians’ are propagating,” he wrote on X while sharing images of the pages.
The BJP, however, continues to stand by Singh. Its national spokesperson and Rajya Sabha MP Sudhanshu Trivedi cited another publication, Inside Story of Sardar Patel, Diary of Maniben Patel, claiming it notes that Nehru raised the Babri Masjid issue and that Patel declined government expenditure for constructing a mosque.
The Congress has dismissed these assertions as fabricated and accused the BJP of relying on “WhatsApp University” narratives to target Nehru and distort historical records.