DEFENDING THE INDEFENSIBLE

It’s an old saying at the Press Club, talk to a journalist on the weekend at your peril. For that is when diary items such as this column are written, and scribes are on the lookout for the odd factoid or a mischievous titbit. Hence, the Twitter spat between Congress MP and national spokesperson Manish Tewari versus Priyanka Chaturvedi, his former Congress colleague, who is now a Rajya Sabha MP from the Shiv Sena and also a party spokesperson, could not have been “better timed”. Priyanka took on Manish for defending the alleged rape accused, Tarun Tejpal as someone who is “much maligned, hugely politically persecuted and now honourably exonerated”. This had Priyanka accusing Manish of “patting the back of an alleged rapist”.tewari was prompt to take her on citing Tejpal’s legal acquittal by a district court. The exchange of “unpleasantries” went on for a while, with one citing the law and the other, morality. Given the fact that the Sena and the Congress are in an alliance in Maharashtra, and that the two are former colleagues, one wonders at the very acerbic nature of this exchange. Tewari feels that this was triggered off by an interview he gave to the Hindu last year (as well as to Newsx) where he named Priyanka (amongst others) as an “import from outside”, who had joined the Congress not out of “ideological conviction” but for the perks of office; and added that outsiders may be made MPS or ministers but should not be given organisational positions (Priyanka was a spokesperson while in the Congress). This may not be the first spat the two have had, but on this one Manish seems to be espousing a very politically incorrect cause, legal acquittals notwithstanding.