‘On a world platform...’: BJP attacks Rahul Gandhi over Cambridge remark

The BJP accused Rahul Gandhi of tarnishing India’s image at a global platform and stooping low to destroy the country’s fabric

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Saturday accused Congress leader Rahul Gandhi of tarnishing India’s image on a global platform and stooping low to destroy the country’s fabric after he alleged that the Indian democracy is under attack in his Cambridge University speech.

Congress leader Rahul Gandhi listed five aspects of the alleged attack on Indian democracy in his Cambridge University speech. (Twitter/Congress)

“Rahul Gandhi is saying Indian Judiciary is failed, Indian democracy is destroyed, Indian media is sold out and that India is no place to invest... This is how Rahul Gandhi is presenting India on a world platform. Truth is, all stakeholders around the world want to invest in India... countries that don’t want to invest in China want to invest in India...This has happened for the first time in 75 years,” BJP national spokesperson Sambit Patra said in New Delhi.

At Cambridge, Gandhi listed five key aspects of the alleged attack on Indian democracy -- capture and control of media and judiciary; surveillance and intimidation; coercion by federal law enforcement agencies; attacks on minorities, Dalits and tribals; and shutting down of dissent.

Patra said it was the UPA government led by the Congress that had bugged and tapped the phones of their ministers. Patra said former president Pranab Mukherjee had himself reported to the then Prime Minister that his room was bugged when he was a Union minister. “An RTI reply revealed that over 9,000 phones were tapped and nearly 500 e-mails were read (during the UPA government),” Patra added.

On Gandhi’s remarks on the attack on minorities, Patra said, “Rahul Gandhi has stooped down this low to destroy the fabric of India.” The BJP spokesperson questioned whether Gandhi works for any agency that brings down India’s image. “Is he working on their payroll?” he asked.

“You are not a bright kid doesn’t mean that India is not in a bright spot. India is bright and India is doing good,” Patra said.

Meanwhile, the Congress on Saturday hit back at the BJP saying that Rahul Gandhi has always stood for and espouses the causes of the common man and that the counts on which the BJP has been attacking their leader were rather, baseless. “(Prime Minister) Modi has made much worse, useless and baseless allegations against Indian political ecosystem and opposition when he was travelling to Shanghai in 2015,” Congress spokesperson Supriya Srinate alleged. “While in Shanghai, he (Modi) had said that people in this country curse as why were they born in India” she alleged.

Urging the ruling party to watch Gandhi’s Cambridge lecture fully, she said, “That video will widen your world view and it may make you understand what the values are on the basis of which our country is built.”