Cong in soup over RaGa jibe

NEW DELHI: The Rashtriya Janata Dal on Monday asked Rahul Gandhi to look at recent electoral history of regional parties putting up a strong fight against the BJP as it took a swipe at him for his critical comments aimed at them, saying the Congress leader’s claims were “bizarre” and not in sync with his own party’s stand.

RJD spokesperson Manoj Kumar Jha said regional parties are strong in a majority of Lok Sabha seats in the fight against the BJP, and the Congress should settle to be “cotravellers” and let them be in the “driving seat” in over 320 of the 543 LS constituencies. This is a point RJD leader Tejashwi Yadav has also made, he noted.

In his address at his party’s ‘Chintan Shivir’ in Udaipur, Rahul claimed regional parties cannot fight the BJP-RSS as they lack ideology. The Congress can fight it, he said.

Regional parties annoyed

“I find it a little bizarre and out of sync,” Rajya Sabha MP Jha told PTI. Meanwhile, JD(S) leader HD Kumaraswamy in an apparent sarcastic note, asked Rahul to elaborate to regional parties about ideological commitment, saying the national party has no presence in most parts of the country.

He said the Congress toppled the IK Gujral-led United Front govt, demanding DMK be kept out of the cabinet by citing the links of the Dravidian party with the LTTE in the backdrop of former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi’s assassination. But, the same Congress in the later years shared a cordial, political relationship with that party.

“Is sharing power with the same DMK for 10 years in UPA-1 and -2 governments, led by Manmohan Singh, an ideological commitment?” he questioned in a tweet.