Former Congress president Rahul Gandhi on Tuesday said it was Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath’s prerogative to see an “international conspiracy” in the Hathras incident but he “personally sees in it a major tragedy.”
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“Yogi Aditynath is entitled to his opinion, he can imagine what he wants, but what I saw was a lovely girl brutalised and killed, and her family threatened and subjugated,” he stated at a press conference in Patiala.
Mr. Gandhi said he saw a tragedy in the incident and Mr. Adityanath should also have had the decency to do so. He said he found it interesting that Prime Minister Narendra Modi had not uttered a word about the incident, in which ‘a kid was raped and murdered and her whole family was under attack by the administration’.
On FIRs being registered against many Congress workers by police, he said what he and his party men and women suffered was minor compared to what the victim’s family was going through. “They are the ones who have really been pushed around”. It was “no big deal” for him to be pushed around by the cops in U.P.
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‘Weak Opposition’
Responding to a question that the Central government was able to take unilateral decisions because of a weak Opposition, he observed, “give me free press and other key institutions and this [NDA] government will not last long.”
He noted that Opposition in any country functioned within a framework, including the media, the judicial system and institutions that protected the voice of people. “In India, that entire framework has been controlled and captured by the Bharatiya Janata Party government; the entire architecture designed for giving voice to the people has been captured.”.
Mr. Gandhi termed the control of institutions by the government a big problem. No other country in the world today was faced with a situation where even the Media did not question the government when its land had been seized by another nation. “Mr. Modi is not interested in India’s people but is only concerned about protecting and promoting his image, which would have got dented had he admitted to China’s incursion. The media, by helping promote his image, is also to blame,” he said.
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When asked about Opposition parties making fun of his protests in Punjab and Haryana, Mr. Gandhi shrugged it off, saying they had done that in February too, when he had first warned about Coronavirus. “But the truth is there for all to see now,” he said. Six months on, everyone would know the truth of what he was saying now on the farm laws too. Taking a dig at Mr. Modi’s statement that India would win the war against COVID-19 in 22 days, he said, “You can see for yourself who talks more sense - Modi or me.” “You [media] can decide who is joking.”
‘Laws will destroy MSP
The farm laws, he asserted, would end up destroying the Minimum Support Price (MSP) and the Public Distribution System (PDS). Calling the existing food security system a fortress for the farmers, he said it had needed improvement and reforms. “The new laws will destroy the whole food security system. This will affect the entire chain of the system, rendering lakhs of people employed in the farming sector jobless, and also ending the subsidies for the poor. If Mr. Modi was so confident that these laws were beneficial to farmers, why didn’t he face a debate in Parliament, why did he push the laws during COVID-19 times when farmers cannot come out on the roads. Why did he not hold a press conference or come and meet the farmers in Punjab,” Mr. Gandhi said.
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Punjab Chief Minister Captain Amarinder Singh had informed media that his government would soon come out with a special session to scuttle the Central legislations, which were crafted to destroy not just the farmers but the entire agricultural system, and the State too.
Asked why Punjabis should trust him, Mr. Gandhi said the people of Punjab should see his actions and look at his political career, all through which he had always stood with those suffering any injustice.
