Nonplussed people in a Shahjahanpur village woke up on Thursday, August 3 to find the statue of Father of the Nation Mahatma Gandhi installed in the primary school compound had been painted saffron, raising questions of who did it and why.

The statue of Mahatma Gandhi was installed in village Dhaka Ghanshyampur in Banda tehsil of Shahjahanpur District almost 20 years ago. Earlier, the statue was white but on Thursday it was painted in a saffron hue. Villagers vouch that till this week the statue was white. “There were talks about giving a fresh coat but no one thought that it would be painted in saffron colour,” said Manish Gupta, a former pradhan of the village.

Incidentally, the statue has been given a new coat of paint but the pedestal has been left as it is. “This clearly shows the intention of the people who did it. This was done with a design to create disharmony in the society. They gave a new coat of colour to the statue but the pedestal is still in off-white colour,” pointed out Gupta.

Congress district president Kaushal Mishra alleged that local leaders and workers of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party were behind the incident. In Yogi Raj, every government building is being painted in saffron colour. The ruling party workers have not even spared the ‘Father of the Nation’ and have painted his statue in saffron. This is disgraceful, he said and asked: “Have you ever seen Mahatma’s statue in saffron colour?”