Gandhi not a shield to cover-up: AAP minister Kapil Mishra's dig at Ashutosh

NEW DELHI: Mahatma Gandhi's name cannot be used as shield to "cover-up", Delhi minister Kapil Mishra on Saturday said taking a veiled dig at his party colleague Ashutosh for seeking to defend sacked AAP minister Sandeep Kumar over an alleged sex scandal. In his blog on NDTV website, Ashutosh had claimed that leaders like Gandhi and Pandit Nehru had "lived with their desires beyond social boundaries". "It is easy to link anything to Bapu's life...connecting an aspect of his life to anything is easy, but not right," he said. Mishra said, "Any comparison with Bapu's life can only be done when there is a balance that can weigh, that can measure (his life)." In response to Ashutosh's claim that Kasturba Gandhi was very much disturbed over Gandhiji's relationship with Sarla Chaudhary, Mishra said it is difficult to understand the bond between 'Ba and Bapu'. "There is no Bapu without Ba". "If one reads the letters written by Ba to Bapu then one will have a very different understanding of love," Mishra said in a blog. Defending Sandeep Kumar, sacked as a minister and pilloried by Arvind Kejriwal for "betraying" AAP's values, Ashutosh had said he did no wrong and action was taken against him solely for "perception management". Kumar was removed after an "objectionable" appeared which showed him in a compromising position with a woman. When contacted, Mishra refused to term his blog as an attack on Ashutosh, but said, it was a view different from the one held by his party colleague. "Bapu is a key to solve problems. He isn't a shield to hide and cover-up," Mishra said in his blog. The Minister said one would require many lives to learn about the 'life of the Mahtama'.