CONGRESS LEADER Rahul Gandhi’s swift disqualification as Lok Sabha MP Friday united disparate anti-BJP parties with the Congress’s friends and rivals in the Opposition camp strongly condemning the decision as “authoritarian” and lashing out at the Government, saying the country is heading towards “dictatorship”.
The Congress, in response, welcomed “the statements of all the Opposition leaders”, with party leader Jairam Ramesh saying “there was a consensus that we should now take the job of building Opposition unity in a systematic way”.
The sense in the Opposition camp was that Gandhi’s disqualification and conviction in the defamation case was an alarm bell and it was time to unite — or at least send a symbolic signal of unity — while sinking their political differences.
Among the first to attack the Government was West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee. She was followed by Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal and his Telangana counterpart K Chandrasekhar Rao. All three chief ministers have been very vocal critics of the Congress.
“In PM Modi’s New India, Opposition leaders have become the prime target of BJP. While BJP leaders with criminal antecedents are inducted into the cabinet, Opposition leaders are disqualified for their speeches. Today, we have witnessed a new low for our Constitutional democracy,” said Banerjee.
Kejriwal described the move to disqualify Gandhi as “cowardice”. “They want to create an environment where only one party remains. One nation, one party, and the other parties are finished off. They want to create an environment where there is only one leader. One nation, one leader, all other leaders are finished off. This is called dictatorship.”
He said the people are now living in a state of fear. “The businessmen, farmers, workers, leaders… everybody is scared… the judiciary is scared, judges are scared… media is scared… they intimidate everyone… they threaten everyone with CBI, ED and income tax,” he said.
Asked about his party’s turbulent equation with the Congress, Kejriwal said relationships between parties are not important now. “Everyone has come together. This battle is not just Rahul Gandhi’s battle. This battle is not Congress’s battle. This battle is to save the country from a dictatorship, a less educated individual, an arrogant individual,” he said
BRS chief Rao said “today is a black day in the history of Indian democracy”. “It is highly reproachable that the Modi government is not only abusing Constitutional institutions but also using the highest democratic platform, the Parliament, for its nefarious activities,” he said.
SP chief Akhilesh Yadav reminded the Government that political challenges will not end by taking away the Lok Sabha membership of Gandhi. “The individual who filed the defamation suit should have filed it against those people who fled after deceiving their country… because of which his name and reputation name was sullied,” he said.
Several other Opposition parties came up with similar remarks.
“It is condemnable that the BJP is now using the criminal defamation route to target Opposition leaders and disqualify them as done with Rahul Gandhi now. This comes on top of the gross misuse of ED/CBI against the Opposition,” said CPI(M) general secretary Sitaram Yechury.
Others from states to slam the BJP Central Government were Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan and his TN counterpart M K Stalin. Vijayan said Gandhi’s disqualification was a “violent attack on democracy” by the Sangh Parivar while Stalin called on all “political parties to realize that the action…is an attack on progressive democratic forces and oppose it in unison”.
Jharkhand Chief Minister Hemant Soren said the disqualification is a “vendetta battle” that has exposed how “Opposition leaders are living in a state of Emergency while BJP leaders are living in Amrit Kaal”.
RJD MP Manoj K Jha said the disqualification decision was “the biggest black blot in the history of Parliamentary democracy” and the “official declaration of the death of democracy”. Shiv Sena (Uddhav Thackeray) faction leader Priyanka Chaturvedi said the “disqualification yet again proves that we are living in the times of caged democracy”.
NCP’s Supriya Sule described the disqualification as “totally disappointing”. BSP MP Kunwar Danish Ali said if MPs were to lose their membership for defamation, 70 percent of them will be disqualified — “most of them from the BJP”.
Speaking to reporters after an AICC meeting, chaired by Mallikarjun Kharge and attended by Sonia Gandhi, Jairam Ramesh said, “We are coordinating in Parliament, now the coordination has to be outside… It is heartening to note that some parties, which were not part of this floor coordination in Parliament, have also issued public statements condemning the action of disqualification of Rahul Gandhi. The Congress will remain in touch with them.”
