New Delhi, March 25: A combative Rahul Gandhi on Saturday said he would continue to defend democracy in the country even if he is disqualified from Parliament for life or jailed and claimed that a “panic-stricken” government has handed the Opposition a “big weapon” by disqualifying him.
Addressing his first press conference after his disqualification from the Lok Sabha, Gandhi claimed that the action against him was taken because Prime Minister Narendra Modi was “scared” of his next speech in Parliament on the Adani issue and alleged that the “whole game” was to distract people from the issue and the panic the government was feeling over the matter.
He said he would continue to ask questions on the Adani issue, adding the moot questions remain that who invested Rs 20,000 crore in Adani shell firms and what is the businessman’s relationship with the prime minister. He vowed he will keep raising these questions.
Gandhi was disqualified from the Lok Sabha on Friday, a day after a court in Gujarat’s Surat convicted him in a 2019 defamation case. The disqualification will bar Gandhi (52), a four-time MP, from contesting polls for eight years unless a higher court stays his conviction.
Asserting that “democracy has finished in this country”, the former Congress chief claimed that he never sought foreign intervention in his remarks made in the UK and accused Union ministers of “lying” against him in Parliament to which he said he wanted to respond but was not allowed.
He also said that the BJP was trying to divert the issue by alleging that he had insulted OBCs and he would continue to ask what is Modi’s relationship with businessman Gautam Adani.
“I am here defending the democratic voice of the Indian people, I will continue to do that. I am not scared of these threats, of these disqualifications, allegations, prison sentences. I am not scared of them. These people don’t understand me yet, I am not scared of them,” he said, attacking the BJP.
“Disqualify me for life, put me inside jail, I will keep going. I will not stop,” he said, noting that it makes no difference to him.
“I have been disqualified because the prime minister is scared of my next speech. I have seen it in his eyes. So he is terrified of the next speech that is going to come and does not want that speech to be in Parliament,” the former Congress chief alleged at the 30-minute press conference, flanked by Rajasthan Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot, Chhattisgarh CM Bhupesh Baghel and party general secretaries Jairam Ramesh and K C Venugopal.
He claimed that his attack on Adani was the reason for distraction through allegations and now disqualification.
Hitting back, BJP leader Ravi Shankar Prasad rubbished the contention that Gandhi’s conviction in a defamation case and his subsequent disqualification was linked to the latter raising the Adani Group issue and his conviction has come in a defamation came for his defamatory remarks made in 2019. Prasad alleged that the Congress did not press its battery of lawyers in service to immediately obtain a stay on Gandhi’s conviction by a Gujarat court with a view to “encashing” the issue in the upcoming assembly polls in Karnataka. The former union minister also charged Gandhi with insulting OBCs, “an issue that will be taken up in all earnestness by the BJP across the country”. (PTI)
