Minutes after Rahul Gandhi’s fierce attack on the Modi government 3.0 over the Union budget, BJP IT head cell head Amit Malviya said, “If there are no OBC officers at the top echelons of the Govt, it is Third Time Fail Rahul Gandhi’s father Rajiv Gandhi and grandmother Indira Gandhi’s legacy.”
“The Congress has been anti SC/ST and OBCs since Independence.Jawaharlal Nehru had written to the Chief Ministers, explicitly opposing reservations for SCs and STs … The Congress did not even implement Mandal Commission recommendations, made in 1983. Finally, it was a BJP supported Govt that implemented it in 1990. Rajiv Gandhi vehemently opposed OBC quota in 1990,” Malviya said in a post on X.
“Under Sonia Gandhi (between 2004-10), the Congress tried to defraud the OBCs in Andhra Pradesh by giving away a chunk of their quota to Muslims. They even tried to include Muslims under the central OBC quota in 2011, which would have reduced the OBC share in central institutions and jobs. More recently, in Karnataka, the Congress has included the entire Muslim community in the OBC list. So, Balak Buddhi Rahul Gandhi should know, that Congress’s history is replete with instances of obstructing reservation for SC/ST and OBCs. It is an anti-Hindu party,” he added.
Parliamentary affairs minister Kiren Rijiju also questioned Rahul Gandhi’s speech and criticised him for “attacking the Speaker and speaking beyond the rules”.
“In the Lok Sabha, the way LoP Rahul Gandhi attacked the Speaker and spoke beyond the rules, I condemn it. Being the Leader of the Opposition is a responsibility, but he is being irresponsible. The House works according to the rules and Speaker is the custodian of the House but Rahul Gandhi kept attacking the Speaker,” Rijiju said.
“The representatives of 140 crore people of the country sit in the Parliament. Rahul Gandhi has always been to speak according to the rules but he has always been breaking the rules. Since Rahul Gandhi has now become the LoP, he will have to work according to the rules of the Parliament. No one is above the rules or the Constitution,” he added.
Union minister Ashwini Vaishnaw targeted Gandhi’s “language” and said, “… It is sad that Rahul Gandhi’s behaviour as the leader of the opposition and the language he uses in Parliament, questioning the constitutional post of the Lok Sabha Speaker, is an action to undermine democracy and the Constitution.”
Recalling 2013 incident, Vaishnaw said, “There is a history behind this when Rahul Gandhi publicly tore the ordinance brought by his government, so I do not see any intention of him to follow the limits of the Constitution.”
BJP’s national general secretary BL Santhosh, shared images on X (formerly Twitter) featuring the board members of the Rajiv Gandhi Foundation. The list included prominent Congress leaders such as Sonia Gandhi, Rahul Gandhi, Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, former prime minister Manmohan Singh, and P Chidambaram. Santhosh posed a question to the public, asking them to identify which of these board members belong to the OBC, SC, and ST categories.
“Rajiv Gandhi Foundation Board for your perusal. Identify OBCs, SCs and STs for the use of the Congress and its troll army,” Santhosh wrote In his post on X. Along with this message, he shared a screenshot taken from the foundation’s website, clearly displaying the names and photographs of its board members.
BJP spokesperson Shehzad Poonawalla also lashed out Rahul saying, “If hypocrisy had a face! Today, Rahul Gandhi says help MSME, not big business. (He) said during Covid: Help big businesses, not MSMEs.”
Rahul Gandhi on Monday opened an all-out attack against the NDA government and accused it of creating “chakravyuha” of 21st century.
Participating in the debate in the Lok Sabha on the Union Budget of 2024-25, Gandhi claimed the fear is spreading through a ‘chakravyuh’ with everybody trapped in it, including BJP MPs, farmers and workers.
“Thousands of years ago in Haryana, in Kurukshetra, six people killed a youth, Abhimanyu, in a chakravyuha. A chakravyuha has violence and fear. Abhimanyu was trapped and killed in the chakravyuha,” he said.
Gandhi’s reference was to the Mahabharat legend according to which Abhimanyu was killed in a chakravyuha — a multi-tiered maze and formation — in which he was trapped.
He said the chakravyuha is also called a ‘Padmavyūha’ which is a multi-tiered formation that looks like a lotus (the BJP symbol).
“You build a chakravyuha, and we break the chakravyuha,” Gandhi said, asserting that the opposition would break this cycle by carrying out a caste census.
