Taking on the Gandhi family once again, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Uma Bharti on Friday said she suspected “a split’’ in the Gandhi family going by the way Priyanka was using her children to seek votes for the party and her husband Robert Vadra expressing keenness to join politics. Ms. Priyanka had subsequently denied that Mr. Vadra was interested in politics.
Talking to The Hindu here after addressing an election rally, Ms. Bharti said Ms. Priyanka’s move to bring her two young children to an election rally “begging for votes’’ when just a few years ago she had moved the court after some newspapers had carried their pictures citing violation of privacy as the reason was surprising.
“Priyanka begging for votes with her family only shows the weaknesses in the party and crisis within the family. I have no objection to her doing this but it should not be done at the cost of democracy,’’ she said. Ms. Priyanka had, for the first time, taken her children to an election rally at Rae Bareli on Thursday and justified it by saying that they should also know the ground reality of their country while Mr. Vadra had just a few days back said at an election rally he would join politics if he thought he could make a difference to the people and if the people so desired, but this was denied by Mr. Priyanka the very next day saying that he was a successful businessman and had been “misquoted’’ by the media.
Earlier addressing an election rally at Chirgaon from where Shyam Sunder Yadav, has been given the ticket after he was denied mandate by the Samajwadi Party, Ms. Bharti responded very sharply to Rahul Gandhi’s remark in which he had called migrants from Uttar Pradesh as beggars, by saying that he did not know the difference between a beggar and a hardworking labourer. “It was his sister begging for votes along with her children,’’ she said.
Describing the members of the Gandhi family as “self obsessed’’ Ms. Bharti said they behaved like “kings and rulers’’ and lived under an illusion that they were born to rule. “They should know there are no Gods in democracy. Only people are supreme.’’ She reminded the people that even Indira Gandhi had been rejected by the people after Emergency.
Making a personal attack on Rahul, she said just by eating in a Dalit house or sitting with a poor family does not indicate Ram Rajya. “Things will change only if a Dalit or a poor man from Bundelkhan sits in Rahul Gandhi’s drawing room in Delhi,’’ she said amidst a thunderous applause.
Ms. Bharti, who had been described as an outsider to U.P. by Mr. Gandhi, sought to remind him that Moti Lal Nehru had come from Kashmir and settled in U.P. and Sonia Gandhi had come from Italy and accepted by the people of the State.
