RSS defamation suit forces Rahul to court

Case was filed over Congress party chief’s accusation that RSS killed Mahatma Gandhi

Congress president Rahul Gandhi will appear in a Thane court on June 12 for a hearing in a defamation case filed by an RSS worker. This comes days after former president and senior Congress leader Pranab Mukherjee attended an RSS event in Nagpur.

The defamation case was filed by a Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) activist Rajesh Kunte following Gandhi’s utterances at a rally in Thane in March 2014 in which he had accused the RSS of killing Mahatma Gandhi.

After the hearing, Gandhi will travel to Mumbai and directly interact with the party’s over 15,000 booth-level workers at a function in Goregaon, a crucial exercise ahead of the 2019 Lok Sabha elections.

This would mark the launch of a national endeavour, ‘Project Shakti’ through which the Congress president would establish direct communication between the grassroots workers and the party’s central leadership, said Mumbai Congress President Sanjay Nirupam.

Election strategy

He said the party workers would be enrolled for the project using their basic details and confirming that those enrolling were actually Congress men. These filtered people would then need to send an SMS on a contact number which would be provided to them by the party officials. These will enable the ground-level workers to share their ideas and views with the central leadership of the party which will boost their morale ensuring a proper flow of communication internally.