New Delhi: Rahul Gandhi is the present day Mir Jafar, who went to the Britishers to ask for help because he wanted to become the Nawab, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) spokesperson Sambit Patra said Tuesday, as the ruling party continued its diatribe against him for his UK speech.
Patra reiterated that Rahul will have to apologise for what he said in the foreign land about India.
“It would not be an aberration to say Rahul Gandhi is a present day Mir Jafar of the Indian polity. After all, the prince wants to become a king (Shezada nawaab banana chahta hai),” Patra said at a press briefing, referring to the military general who sided with the British in the Battle of Plassey in 1757.
Over the past week, the ruckus over Rahul’s statements made in the UK has led to adjournments in both houses of Parliament. The ruling party has objected to Rahul’s remark that the US and European nations were oblivious that a huge chunk of democratic model had come undone in India.
Top BJP leaders including Kiren Rijiju, Anurag Thakur, Smriti Irani, Piyush Goyal, J. P. Nadda, Pralhad Joshi, and Hardeep Singh Purie have attacked Rahul for his remarks which they claim were an insult to the country in foreign soil.
Patra, meanwhile, also raised the issue of Rahul’s attendance and his claim that mics were switched off in Parliament to suppress the Opposition’s voice.
“Your attendance in Parliament is 52 per cent while the national average is 79 per cent, and your own state Kerala’s average attendance is 84 per cent. You have only participated in 6 debates, while the national average is 41 and state average is 68.2 per cent. You only ask questions in foreign land, not in Parliament. You don’t participate in Parliament, but ask quotations only on the foreign land,” Patra said, adding that Rahul had only asked 92 questions in the Lok Sabha while his state’s average is 216 questions and national average is 163.
Rahul is the sitting MP from Kerala’s Wayanad in the Lok Sabha.
“It is shameful that Rahul Gandhi termed the institutions of democracy in India as ‘Deep States’. He drew similarity of Indian institutions with Pakistan’s ISI and said Indian media and judiciary were constrained,” Patra claimed.
What Congress has said
In a parliamentary advisory committee meeting chaired by External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar two days ago, Rahul asserted that he did not ask any country to intervene. Referring to his comments about businessman Gautam Adani, the Congress leader told the panel that he criticised an individual in his speech at Cambridge and not the government.
The Congress party has ruled out the BJP’s demand that Rahul tender an apology in Parliament. It has also also dug up instances when PM Modi had criticised the country or the government in the past.
The opposition party released a list of five instances when Modi “embarrassed” India. One of the speeches the Congress referred to was that during the PM’s visit to South Korea in May 2015 when he addressed the Indian diaspora in Seoul. Modi had said it was earlier believed that being born in India was a punishment for sins committed in one’s past life. “In the last one year, people’s perception of India has changed, he said.
(Edited by Tony Rai)