New Delhi: The Congress is concerned over threats to the Leader of the Opposition Rahul Gandhi and plans to fight the issue at two levels. The party will hit the streets across the country against the threats and has also taken legal action to deal with those making such remarks.
The grand old party feels that such threats coming from leaders of the BJP and its allies are part of a plan to harm the Leader of the Opposition who has been asking tough questions to the Narendra Modi-led government.
What worries the grand old party is the silence of the Centre over the entire issue as Rahul's grandmother former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi and father former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi too had been killed violently by those who were opposed to their politics.
While Indira Gandhi fell to bullets fired by two of her bodyguards on October 31, 1984, in retaliation to an Army operation to flush out terrorists holed up in the Golden Temple in Amritsar in Punjab, Rajiv Gandhi was blown to pieces by a female suicide bomber belonging to the Sri Lankan militant group LTTE on May 21, 1991.
"We have asked all the state units to protest against threats to Rahul Gandhi over the next few days and explain the issue to the people,” All India Congress Committee (AICC) in-charge of organisation KC Venugopal told ETV Bharat.
"He is the champion of social justice and is therefore being targeted. We will not sit back and watch this targeting," he said. On September 18, members of the 'Mahila' Congress protested outside the BJP offices across the country. Members of the Youth Congress also protested the issue in Delhi against Minister Ravneet Bittu's remarks. The Delhi and Andhra Pradesh units protested the issue.
While the nationwide protests over the coming days will be a Congress way of mobilising public support over the issue, the party has also lodged police complaints to pursue legal action.
The Congress has filed a complaint with the Tughlak Road police station in Delhi against four persons including BJP leader Tarvinder Singh Marwah, who openly threatened Rahul Gandhi on September 11, Sanjay Gaikwad an MLA of Shiv Sena Shinde, an ally of the BJP, who promised to give Rs 11 lakh to anyone who would cut Rahul Gandhi’s tongue, Minister of State for Railways Ravneet Bittu, who called Rahul Gandhi terrorist number one on September 15 and UP minister Raghuraj Singh, who called Rahul Gandhi terrorist number one on September 16.
The complaint has been filed to register an FIR, under sections 351, 352, 353, 61 of BNS at the earliest against the said persons and their associates. A separate complaint has been filed against Gaikwad in Maharashtra by Congress leaders.
"The threats issued by various BJP Leaders and its allies, calling for assassination or bodily injury of Rahul Gandhi and also calling the Leader of Opposition of the country a terrorist, exhibit personal hatred by the BJP and NDA partners against our leader. Such utterances are made only with the aim to cause unrest among the general masses to provoke rioting and breach of peace through hate-filled remarks," AICC functionary BM Sandeep told ETV Bharat.
"Rahul Gandhi has been continuously raising issues pertaining to deprived sections of the society such as women, youth, dalits and other marginalised sections and the failure of the BJP to address such public-centric issues. However, the same has not gone down well with the BJP and its allies, therefore the above-named persons have been deputed to make such hate-filled comments on the Leader of Opposition,” added Sandeep.
“The intentional and well-thought acts of criminal intimidation, public mischief are deliberate attempts by BJP/NDA leaders to create enmity, breach of peace, incite aggression, hatred and ill-will among the general public against the LoP Rahul Gandhi, the Indian National Congress and its leaders on the instructions of top bosses of the BJP/NDA," he said.
