The Bharatiya Janata Party on Tuesday termed Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi a “failed dynast” and a failed politician after he defended dynastic politics at a public event in the United States.
Information and broadcasting minister Smriti Irani on Tuesday termed Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi a “failed dynast who chose to speak on his failed political journeys in the United States” after the latter’s address to students at Berkely where he explained his own inherited position in the congress as the “way India runs.”
She also challenged Mr. Gandhi to a debate on the economy after he criticised the Union government’s decision on demonetisation and the “altered” structures of the Mahatma Gandhi Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) and the Good and Services Tax (GST) regime.
“A failed dynast today chose to speak about his failed political journey in the US,” Ms. Irani said at briefing at the BJP’s national headquarters in New Delhi, adding that while Mr. Gandhi’s statement that dynasties were the way “India was run” was an “anomaly” as the election of Prime Minister Modi, President Ram Nath Kovind and vice president M Venkaiah Naidu to the top three Constitutional posts in the country was “an indication that Indian democracy thrives and gives and opportunity to merit.”
She also dismissed questions on the BJP’s own set of dynasts, stating that leaders of “all hues and sizes” were part of the BJP, pointing out that party president Amit Shah was not from a political dynasty, a given in the Congress, according to her.
This was not the only utterance on Mr. Gandhi’s interaction in Berkely that Ms. Irani, made. Ms. Irani had unsuccessfully contested the 2014 Lok Sabha polls from Amethi against Mr. Gandhi.
Mr. Gandhi had said, during the question answer session that followed his speech at Berkely that the Congress had allowed a certain amount of arrogance to seep into it in 2012 that may have led to the party’s defeat in the 2014 polls. “The president of the Congress party in 2012 was Mrs Sonia Gandhi, it seems to be a kind of political confession,” she said.
Mr. Gandhi had also criticised Prime Minister Modi’s government on its handling of the economy, at which Ms Irani issued an open challenge to him to debate the subject with her. “Forget about very senior people in the party or government, I challenge him to debate it with me or with Anil Baluni (BJP national media in charge),” she said.
On his criticism of Prime Minister Modi’s apparent lack of transparency and lack of accessibility to his own party’s MPs she said, “the fact that Rahul Gandhi chose to belittle the Prime Minister is not a surprise but expected... It is an indication of his failed strategy. The people of the country where he leads a political party no longer support him so he is expressing his pain abroad.”
“Rahul Gandhi indicates that everything that Indian citizens have achieved since independence is because of the Congress party, it just goes to show that the ‘arrogance’ he speaks about is not limited to 2012,” she added.
