Sambit Patra slams Congress after PM Museum and Library demands return of Nehru documents

New Delhi: BJP MP Sambit Patra on Monday slammed the Congress after the Prime Minister's Museum and Library (PMML) Society asked the Congress to return Nehru documents that were withdrawn from the museum allegedly on Sonia Gandhi's orders in 2008.
Speaking to ANI, Patra said what was in those letters that the Gandhi family did not want the nation to know.
"In this memorial, initially, only Nehru ji's historical records were present, including all the letters Nehru ji had written to global leaders. Later, it came to light that there were 51 cartons containing letters Nehru ji had written to Edwina Mountbatten, JP Narayan, and many other leaders. In 2008, when Sonia Gandhi was the UPA chairperson, she visited the memorial one day and took all these letters with her," he said.
"Now, during the AGM meeting, Rizwan ji, a historian, has written a letter to Rahul Gandhi asking why this was done. He has requested Rahul Gandhi to help retrieve these important letters, which were public property," the BJP MP added.
Further, Sambit Patra posed questions to Congress over its intention behind the issue.
"The question is whether Rahul Gandhi, as the Leader of Opposition (LoP), will actually speak to Sonia Gandhi to return these letters to the nation. People want to know what Nehru ji had written to Edwina Mountbatten. When the decision was made in 2010 to digitize all these documents, why did Sonia Gandhi take these letters before the digitization could happen? What was in these letters that the Gandhi family did not want the nation to know?" he said.
Meanwhile, Rizwan Kadri, a member of the Prime Minister's Museum and Library (PMML) Society has written a letter to the Lok Sabha Leader of Opposition Rahul Gandhi requesting to give back the documents, that he called are "important aspect of its history" and were withdrawn from the museum allegedly on the order of Congress senior leader Sonia Gandhi.
"In September 2024, I wrote a letter to Sonia Gandhi requesting that the 51 cartons from approximately eight different sections, which were part of the Nehru collections at the Prime Ministers' Museum (formerly the Nehru Memorial), be either returned to the institution, or we be granted permission to scan them, or provided with their scanned copies. This would allow us to study them and facilitate research by various scholars," he said.
"These include important correspondences between Pt. Jawaharlal Nehru and Lady Mountbatten, as well as letters exchanged with Pt. Govind Ballabh Pant, Jayaprakash Narayan, and others. These letters are a significant part of Indian history and have been proven through records to have been withdrawn from the museum in 2008 at Sonia Gandhi's direction," Rizwan Kadri added.