Randeep Surjewala, AICC general secretary, has condemned Nalin Kumar Kateel, BJP State president, for calling Rahul Gandhi, Congress leader, a ‘drug peddler and addict’.
“Mr. Kateel’s statement is imbecile, foolish, and irresponsible. The person who makes such statements is not in the right frame of mind. Mr Kateel seems to have lost his mental balance. He is either ill or is intoxicated. It seems he has consumed a part of the drugs that were seized at the Adani port in Gujarat. He should be sent to a rehabilitation centre,” Mr. Surjewala told journalists in Balaganoor village near Sindgi on Tuesday. He was here to campaign for Ashok Managuli, Congress candidate for the Sindagi bypoll.
“The BJP is a party that is drunk with power and drugged with arrogance. Its leaders don’t seem to realise that,” he said.
ADVERTISEMENT
Later at a rally, he alleged that the JD(S) was trying to help the BJP indirectly by dividing the vote share of secular parties. “The JD(S) is fielding candidates not to win the bypolls, but to help the BJP,” he said.
He also alleged that senior BJP leaders in New Delhi had finalised the names of the JD(S) candidates in Karnataka.
“H.D. Deve Gowda keeps saying that the Congress should take regional parties into confidence in the process of forming an anti-BJP coalition. Most of the regional parties in the country are already with the Congress. But the JD(S) is siding with the BJP by its electoral and other acts,” he said.
ADVERTISEMENT