RAHUL VS BJP

attack is that the states of India are no longer able to negotiate with the government,” the former Congress president said.

“So, the deep state, the CBI, the ED, is now chewing the Indian state and eating it, much like in Pakistan,” he said, accusing the BJP of exercising “100 per cent control” over media, and broad control over the institutional framework.

Reacting to his comments, external affairs minster S Jaishankar said that the change is not called “arrogance” but “confidence and defending national interest”.

The BJP accused Gandhi of harming India in his “hate” against Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and alleged that his frequent critical remarks about the country from foreign soil amounted to “betrayal”.

Taking exception to Gandhi’s remark that the ruling party has spread “kerosene all over the country, you need one spark and we will be in big trouble”, BJP spokesperson Gaurav Bhatia said that it is the Congress which has been carrying kerosene to incite riots since the 1984 antiSikh violence. Bhatia dubbed

Gandhi a “part-time, immature, unsuccessful leader of a hopeless Congress” who has often spoken negatively about the country in foreign places like the US, the UK and Singapore.

“He keeps making such comments frequently and it will not be wrong to say that this amounts to betraying the country,” Bhatia said.

The conference, organised by a think tank, Bridge India, also saw Gandhi toning down his rhetoric against regional parties.

“We have to coordinate with our friends in the Opposition. I don’t view the Congress as the ‘Big Daddy’. It is a group effort with the Opposition. But it is a fight to regain India,” he said.

Gandhi’s comments came days after his remarks that regional parties were not capable of taking on the BJP for lack of ideological clarity at the Congress Chintan Shivir in Udaipur sparked a controversy.

During the event, Gandhi said, “I was talking to some bureaucrats from Europe and they were saying that the Indian Foreign Service has completely changed — they are arrogant. Now they just keep telling us what orders they are getting, there is no conversation.”

(With agency inputs)