Congress leader Rahul Gandhi told the Indian diaspora in the United Kingdom that it is the “duty” of every Indian, everywhere in the world, to “speak up for India’s core values and protect our beloved democracy”.
His reply came after a woman in the audience said, “I’m feeling wretched at the state of my country. My father was an RSS man, and proudly so, but wouldn’t recognise the country that is now. For those of us, who are out of our country, how can we engage and empower our democracy?”
It is the duty of every Indian, everywhere in the world, to speak up for India’s core values and protect our beloved democracy. pic.twitter.com/MQQweHkch4
— Rahul Gandhi (@RahulGandhi) March 7, 2023
Talking to News18 about the new video clip, BJP leader Amit Malviya said, “Rahul Gandhi has been berating India and Indian institutions because they do not favour his kind of politics; his ideologies; his persona. Rahul Gandhi has to realise that he has been rejected by the people of this country, and he can’t be angry at them for making a choice. He has to realise that it is not his entitlement to be the prime minister of India. He has to understand that people do not see any merit in him as an individual or as a politician.”
BJP spokesperson Ravi Shankar Prasad accused the Wayanad lawmaker of “shaming the country” on foreign soil by “seeking foreign intervention”.
“BJP would like to emphatically state with great agony that Rahul Gandhi, in his speeches, has sought to shame India’s democracy, polity, parliament, political system and judicial system,” said BJP spokesperson Ravi Shankar Prasad, accusing the Congress leader of telling lies.
Gandhi had questioned at an event in London “why Europe and the US, the defenders of democracies, were oblivious of how a huge chunk of democracy in India had come undone”. The BJP said Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge and his predecessor Sonia Gandhi should clarify on the comments.
Union minister Kiren Rijiju too reacted on Gandhi’s ‘voices of opposition leaders muted in Parliament’ statement. “Be it Rahul Gandhi or others, they keep abusing the government and PM Modi from dawn to dusk. The one who speaks the most says that they are not allowed to speak,” Rijiju said.