London, May 9 (Inditop) Varun Gandhi, the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) Lok Sabha candidate for Pilibhit, says he wants to revive his late father’s controversial population control policies, a British newspaper reported Saturday.
The Daily Telegraph said Gandhi, the son of Sanjay Gandhi and grandson of late prime minister Indira Gandhi, had told the paper in an interview that he also wanted to introduce conscription in India in order to unite the country.
The paper did not publish a direct quote on Varun Gandhi’s reported pledge to revive population control policies that were implemented by Sanjay Gandhi in the 1970s, in some cases by force.
Varun Gandhi told the paper he hoped to follow in his father’s footsteps by one day offering the strong leadership which he said India had lacked for 20 years.
“Anyone who says they have no ambition to achieve power at some stage is lying,” he said.
He would also propose a bill in parliament to introduce compulsory military service for all Indians to unite the country and overcome caste and religious differences. “Instead of people thinking of themselves as Tamils or Brahmins, they should think of themselves as Indians,” he said.
