NEW DELHI: Backing Rahul Gandhi after the Gujarat high court on Friday rejected his petition seeking a stay on his conviction in a criminal defamation case over his Modi surname remark, senior Congress leaders have, in immediate response, called his suspension from Parliament a “political conspiracy”.
Though Congress Rajya MP and senior advocate Abhishek Manu Singhvi will make an official statement from the All India Congress Committee (AICC) headquarters in the national capital later in the day, the senior leaders have defended Rahul and trained their guns on Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the BJP.
In the initial reaction, Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge said, Rahul Gandhi has always fought for the truth, and will continue to fight in the future. The truth is that fugitives like Lalit Modi, Nirav Modi, Mehul ‘Bhai’, Vijay Mallya and Jatin Mehta, under the supervision of the Modi government, reached abroad suspiciously by taking public money. The BJP freed him, but using lies, as part of a political conspiracy, put Rahul Gandhi in the dock and got him suspended from Parliament.”
The Congress president further said, “In the BJP's rule, first corrupt people run out and on the other hand Modi ji's party plays the game of grabbing power by washing the people accused of corruption in washing machine under BJP's ‘Swachh Bharat Abhiyan.”
Kharge alleged that the country has now come to know deeply about Modi’s “double policy on corruption”. He said none of the Congress leaders and none of their workers is afraid of this “political conspiracy”. “We will fight both the political battle and the legal battle. Satyameva Jayate,” he added.
Congress general secretary in-charge of communications department Jairam Ramesh, in a tweet, said, “We have noted the verdict of the single-judge bench of the Gujarat high court on the disqualification of Rahul Gandhi. The reasoning of the Hon'ble judge is being studied, as it should be, and Abhishek Singhvi will be briefing the media in detail at 3pm. The judgment only redoubles our resolve to pursue the matter further.”
Ramesh modified his statement to say that since the entire judgment of the single bench of the Gujarat high court will be made available only around 2:30 pm, Singhvi's press conference will now take place at 3:30 pm.
Rahul's sister and Congress general secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, in a tweet, wrote a few lines from a famous Hindi poem. She said, “Rahul Gandhi is fighting the battle of truth and interests of the people in front of this arrogant power.”
She alleged that arrogant power wants that questions of public interest should not be raised, arrogant power wants that questions that improve the lives of the people of the country should not be raised and arrogant power wants that they should not be asked questions on inflation or nothing on employment of youth. There should be no voice for the welfare of the farmers, there should be no talk of the rights of women, the question of honour of the laborers should not be raised, she said.
Priyanka further said, “The arrogant power is trying every trick to suppress the truth, it is adopting all the means, price, punishment, discrimination, deceit, hypocrisy to distract from the questions related to the interests of the public. But, in front of truth, satyagraha and the power of the people, neither the arrogance of power nor the veil of lies over the truth will last long. Rahul Gandhi has lit the light of questions related to the interests of the public in front of this arrogant power.”
She noted that Rahul is ready to pay any cost for this and despite all the attacks and tactics of the arrogant BJP government, like a true patriot, he has not shied away from raising questions related to the public. “Standing on the duty path of sharing the pain of the public. Truth will win. The voice of the public will win,” she added.
Former Punjab Congress president Navjot Singh Sidhu also supported the party’s former national president. In a tweet, he said the law sometimes sleeps but never dies. “You hang the doves and acquit the vultures. When the whistleblower is annihilated and those he exposes are protected, democracy is doomed!”
Sidhu said Rahul is the fearless torch-bearer of constitutional values, a knight in shining armour of the nation’s democracy and every attempt to silence his voice will prove futile for he is shielded by his righteous living and moral authority, fearlessly questioning those in power. “The dictatorial answer to his voice of truth - ‘use brute force’. Character is not made in a crisis, it is exhibited,” he added.
