Leaders of the Andhra Pradesh Congress Committee (APCC) will organise a ‘Satyagraha’ deeksha at the Mahatma Gandhi statue in Kaleswara Rao Market, Vijayawada on Sunday to protest against the conviction of the party leader Rahul Gandhi in a defamation case and his subsequent disqualification as a Member of the Lok Sabha.
Addressing a press conference at Andhra Ratna Bhavan here on Saturday, the APCC president Gidugu Rudra Raju lambasted the Bharatiya Janata Party Government at the Centre for what he called unfair disqualification of Mr. Rahul Gandhi.
The State Congress chief said democracy was being imperilled in India with the BJP resorting to politics of vendetta. He said the case was being dragged in a Surat court and the complainant, a BJP legislator, had gone to the High Court and secured a stay on his petition and then withdrew it.
He said Mr. Rahul Gandhi was disqualified at the behest of the BJP, as the former was persistently exposing the party’s crony capitalism. “The Gandhi family, which has already lost Indira and Rajiv, is a family of sacrifices and BJP’s attempts to throttle democracy will not intimidate it.”
Citing the examples of a few BJP legislators in Uttar Pradesh and Karnataka, who were convicted, he said but they had not been disqualified. He accused the BJP government at the Centre of “misusing the Enforcement Directorate (ED), the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) and other Central agencies“ to target the opposition parties and said people, who were silently observing the authoritarian rule of the BJP, would teach the party a befitting lesson in the elections.
He said following the directions of the All India Congress Committee leadership, the Andhra Pradesh Congress would join hands with the people and organise solidarity marches across the State.
Welcoming the support of the opposition parties, he said “Opposition unity” was the need of the hour to “safeguard democracy in the country”. Later, he released a poster on the proposed protest by the party.
The APCC working president Sunkara Padmasree and Vijayawada City Congress president Naraharasetti Narasimha Rao were also present.
