Cornered in Parliament, ruling party rakes up Cong scion’s 2010 remarks to up the ante.
New Delhi : With chances of a smooth session appearing bleak and crucial legislations getting stalled, the BJP has drummed up its political attack on the Congress leadership. After Home Minister Rajnath Singh”s comments in Parliament on Friday, senior minister Ravishankar Prasad made a direct attack at Rahul Gandhi for coining the term ”Hindu terror”.
Prasad raked up Rahul”s comments made in 2010 where he had expressed apprehensions that radical Hindu terror could be a cause of bigger concern than Islamic jehadi terror in India. The reported comments were part of the Wikileaks revelations. According to Wikileaks, Rahul made the comment during an interaction with the then US ambassador to India.
“BJP wants to know from Sonia Gandhi that does she approve of the whole level of Hindu terror being alleged by Rahul and other Congress leaders,” Prasad said here.
Reacting on Ghulam Nabi Azad”s remarks that the Congress party had sacrificed its top leaders like Indira and Rajiv Gandhi to terror, Prasad said the Congress did not seem to have learnt the right lessons from those sacrifices. ”Congress has not learnt the right lessons from those sacrifices. Otherwise its flip-flops on terrorism would not have been there”, he remarked.
Home Minister Rajnath Singh had blamed the Congress on the floor of the house on Friday for weakening India”s fight against terrorism by raising the bogey of Hindu terror. The Congress had taken objection to the comments and asked the Speaker to expunge it.
Even though the govt has convened an all-party meeting on Monday to find a way out of the parliament impasse, it is not very hopeful of a positive response from the Congress. The party claims that the Congress floor leaders are tired and not in favour of overdoing the disruption but Sonia and Rahul Gandhi think otherwise. Under the circumstances, the govt has given a clear message to the party leaders to
go out aggressively against the Congress leadership. While the land bill is not listed for the ongoing session, the govt is apprehensive that the GST bill would be a serious casualty.
SHINDE DENIAL
Meanwhile in Pune, senior Congress leader Sushil Kumar Shinde today vehemently denied having used the expression “Hindu terrorism” in Parliament, as claimed by Rajnath Singh.
Refuting the allegation, Shinde said, “I never used the words ‘Hindu terrorism’ in the Parliament. I had used the expression meaning Hindu terrorism on a party forum in Jaipur. But I immediately corrected myself and withdrew it as the terrorism has no caste, creed or religion.”
PC BACKS SHINDE
Former home minister P Chidambaram also attacked Rajnath Singh, accusing him of resorting to a completely distorted Hindu terror remarks to blame the former UPA government.
He said Shinde had questioned Hindu terror in a very different context but Singh’s statement was a completely diversionary argument.
Chidambaram said Shinde made a statement outside Parliament and did not use the phrase Hindu terror in the manner in which Rajnath Singh was quoting.
“What he (Shinde) was referring to was the right wing
extremist groups and some of them were charged in several bomb blast cases, Malegaon, Mecca Masjid and one or two other cases.
Govt mulls robust system to counter radicalisation
New Delhi: Involvement of community elders, monitoring of radical social media platforms and real-time sharing of information are a few steps government plans to take to prevent youths getting attracted to radical ideologies, such as that propagated by ISIS. A high-level meeting on Saturday, chaired by Union Home Secretary L C Goyal, formalised a strategy to neutralise extremist ideologies, such as that espoused by ISIS, which has influenced thousands around the world.
