BHARAT BACHAO RALLY
OUR CORRESPONDENT / NEW DELHI
Congress’s Rahul Gandhi once again rejected the demand for apology his “Rape in India” remarks, insisting that he had only spoken the truth. The comment, made at an election rally Jharkhand, has triggered a massive political row over the last two days.
It created an uproar in parliament, with BJP leaders demanding that he apologise. The party also formally complained to the Election Commission, seeking action against the Congress leader.
“I was told in Parliament yesterday by the BJP that I should apologise for what I said at a rally. I was asked to apologise for the truth that I spoke,” he said.
“My name is not Rahul Savarkar, I am Rahul Gandhi. I will never apologise for speaking truth and nor will any Congressman do so. It is Narendra Modi and his assistant Amit Shah who has to apologise to the country for destroying India’s economy,” he added in his opening remarks at the party’s mega rally in Delhi’s Ramlila Maidan this afternoon.
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Earlier too, the Congress leader had declared that he would not apologise for his comments.
“Let me clarify what I said. I said the PM keeps talking about ‘Make In India’. So when one opens the newspaper one hoped that one would see news about it, but what do we see when we open the papers? We see so many cases of rapes,” he told reporters outside parliament on Friday.
“Narendra Modi had said ‘Make in India’ but nowadays wherever you look, it is ‘Rape in India’,” he had said.
On Thursday, at a mega rally in Jharkhand, where assembly elections are being held, Rahul Gandhi had said, “It was interpreted as a “call for rape” by BJP leaders, whose protests disrupted the proceedings in both houses of parliament on the penultimate day of the winter session.
“For the first time in history, a leader is giving a call that Indian women should be raped. Is this Rahul Gandhi’s message to the people of the country? He should be punished,” Union Minister Smriti Irani had said.
Former prime minister Manmohan Singh also slammed the government over the economic crisis and accused it of failing to fulfil the promises it made to the youths and the farmers.
He lambasted the government over the economic crisis and said, “They said that the Indian economy will become $5 trillion economy by 2024 and two crore employment to youths every year.”
“Six years ago, Narendra Modi showed lofty promises to people. Now it has been proved that all these promises were false and he has failed in fulfilling all the promises made and the people of the country were misled,” he said.
“Now all this has proved false and it has been proved that they lied to the nation,” the former PM added.