Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader and former Union minister Ravi Shankar Prasad on Saturday accused Congress leader Rahul Gandhi of resorting to lies to defend his London speech, saying the latter was trying to prove himself a “martyr” in his expulsion from the Lok Sabha. gain political distance in the upcoming Karnataka assembly elections.
“The fact is that the Adani businessman’s problem has nothing to do with his disqualification. In fact, it is Rahul Gandhi who is trying to divert attention from his habit of speaking disparagingly of others and in this case the backward classes.
It is the Surat court that served his sentence after he did not apologize for his casteist remark,” Ravi Shankar Prasad told the media at the BJP office in Bihar’s capital Patna.
Prasad said it was surprising why and how a number of senior Congress lawyers chose not to intervene to avoid this situation, as they did in the case of Congress leader Pawan Khera a few weeks ago.
“As many as 32 other leaders, including six from the BJP and RJD leader Lalu Prasad, have been disqualified from the Lok Sabha. Seven cases of defamation of Gandhi are still pending in various courts, including one in Patna,” he added.
The BJP leader said the Congress was trying to take political mileage out of Rahul Ganahi’s disqualification, which was only a natural consequence of the court order and in accordance with the provisions of the Representation of the People Act.
“The BJP will go public to expose Rahul Gadhi’s deliberate attempt to belittle the backward classes (BCs),” RS Prasad said, adding that the party would launch a nationwide campaign against the Congress leader for trying to shame the backward classes.
Countering Rahul Gandhi’s statement that he did not seek help from foreign countries to defend democracy in India, Prasad played an audio clip during the conference (which was not clearly audible though) claiming that the Congress leader usually goes abroad to cry whenever he loses an election.
“Democracy is threatened for him when people don’t vote for his party, the Election Commission becomes impartial and the judiciary turns out to be weak,” Prasad said, adding that they (BJP) can’t help themselves if he (Rahul Gandhi) doesn’t win the election.
“Congress leaders must be ashamed of their baseless remarks about PM Modi, a powerful leader who has taken India’s development path to newer heights and whose stewardship has made India the 5th largest economy in the world.
Rahul Gandhi complained that his phone has a Pegasus. However, when asked by the Supreme Court, he did not go to have his phone ‘checked’, in case his phone was indeed damaged. why didn’t he go He was actually afraid,” he added.
Gandhi was disqualified from the Lok Sabha on Friday after a court in Surat convicted him and jailed him for two years for defamation for a remark he made ahead of the 2019 general elections about Modi’s surname.
The verdict came in a case filed by Gujarat lawmaker Purnesh Modi in Surat, who said the opposition leader had insulted all members of Modi’s community.
At a press conference in Delhi on Saturday, Gandhi said he was expelled because Prime Minister Narendra Modi “is afraid of my next speech on Adani”. He said it would help Congress as it would give the party new ammunition.