Bhima-koregaon: BJP seeks Rahul’s apology
NEWDELHI: The Supreme Court’s refusal to intervene in the arrest of five rights activists by Maharashtra police in connection with the Koregaon-bhima violence case or order an investigation by a Special Investigation Team (SIT), triggered a war of words between the two leading national parties.
Even as Bharatiya Janata Party president Amit Shah claimed it had exposed Congress president Rahul Gandhi and those who indulge into politics over national security, the Congress accused Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Shah of being hand-in-glove with Pakistan.
Shah asked Gandhi to clarify if he was siding with “urban Naxals” . “Congress worries about the human rights of urban Naxals and illegal immigrants, but not country’s people,” the BJP president said in a statement.
He wrote on Twitter, “Those who stooped down to the level of politicising an issue of national security have been exposed by the honourable Supreme Court’s decision today. It is high time that the Congress now clears its stand on this critical issue of Urban Naxalism.” In a separate tweet in response to Gandhi’s post on the micro blogging site, Shah wrote, “There is only one
place for idiocy and it’s called the Congress. Support ‘Bharat Ke Tukde Tukde Gang’, Maoists, fake activists and corrupt elements. Defame all those who are honest and working. Welcome to Rahul Gandhi’s Congress.” The Congress said the Supreme Court is the final authority.
“I do not think the law or the Constitution permits anybody to be held guilty without the verdict of a court and Amit Shah is a ‘taddi paar (externed)’ and has been in jail for a long time. He should know what that is -- it is only on conviction that anybody is found guilty,” the party’s chief spokesperson Randeep Singh Surjewala told reporters.
“We hope that any person who is found in any clandestine activity against the Indian state would be dealt with sternly in accordance with law rather than according to the whims and fancies of Amit Shah who has already seen the writing on the wall in the five election-bound states and is, therefore, frustrated and scared and is prone to making intemperate remarks,” he alleged.
About the BJP’S demand for an apology from Rahul Gandhi, Surjewala hit back, “Let Narendra Modi and Amit Shah first apologise to the nation for inviting the dreaded Pakistani ISI to our sacrosanct Pathankot airbase...”