Now, shoe at Advani

After Chidambaram, Navin Jindal, this time L K Advani became the victim of the latest protest tool — footwear; however, surprisingly the slipper was not hurled by any journalist or any other person but by his own party worker.

Pawas Agarwal, A BJP worker and party’s former Katni district president, lobbed slipper at Bharatiya Janata Party’s prime ministerial candidate, L K Advani, during a meeting addressing party workers in Madhya Pradesh Thursday. The accused was instantly taken into custody and was being questioned.

The exact reason of the shoe attack is still vague; however, as per unconfirmed reports, the accused was upset at the party leadership for being removed from his post on the ground of grouping within the party.

No official word from BJP has come yet. Congress has condemned the incident and asked the BJP not to publicize the issue. BJP spokesperson, Balbir Punj, hailed this incident as a cheap gimmick.

The disgraceful incident of shoe hurling at politicians to showing anger against them occurred for the first time in India few days ago when Jarnail Singh, a journalist with a Hindi daily, lobbed shoes at Union Home Minister P Chidambaram at a press conference in protest of awarding clean chit by the CBI to 1984 Sikh riots accused Jagdish Tytler.

And more recently, Congress MP Navin Jindal had to face the similar incident in Kurushetra during a poll rally when a retired school principal threw shoes at him.

Earlier, an Iraqi journalist Muntada al-Zaidi had chucked a pair of shoes at former US president George W Bush during a press conference in Baghdad followed by February incident with Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao while delivering a speech on the global economy at Cambridge University in London.