‘Will fight BJP’s bid to distort facts for political gains’: Sonia Gandhi | India News

NEW DELHI: Congress president Sonia Gandhi on Monday asserted that her party will resist all attempts by the ruling BJP to undermine and trivialise the roles of the icons of India’s freedom movement, including Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel and Abul Kalam Azad.
“Friends, we have achieved a great deal in the last 75 years, but today’s self-obsessed government is bent on trivialising the great sacrifices of our freedom fighters and the glorious achievements of the country, which can never be accepted,” she said in a statement that followed Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s speech in which he extended the Hall of Fame of freedom struggle beyond Gandhi-Nehru to include Hindutva icons Veer Savarkar, Congress’s opponents like Ram Manohar Lohia, and unsung subaltern heroes.

Her attack came a day after BJP released a video narrating its version of events that led to India’s partition in 1947, blaming top Congress leadership of the time for it. The Congress chief, who is in isolation after contracting Covid-19, however, said in an Independence Day statement that her party will fight all attempts to “trivialise” the sacrifices of freedom fighters and “distort” historical facts for political gains.

Reacting to the PM’s speech which was marked by an at- tack on corruption and nepotism — a theme which many saw as aimed at Congress in particular, Congress also hit out at Modi over his I-Day address, accusing him of letting the country down with his failure to present a “report card” of his government’s performance and the promises he made to the people in the last eight years of BJP rule.

While Rahul Gandhi refused to respond to the PM’s references to nepotism, choosing only to congratulate the people of the country on Independence Day, party spokesperson Pawan Khera took a swipe at Modi over his remarks and claimed the PM was referring to BJP’s “internal politics” and attacking his own ministers whose sons are occupying high positions in the fields of cricket and politics despite not having the expertise. “This was a veiled attack at his own colleagues in BJP. Maybe it was a reference to son of Union home minister (Amit Shah), who never played a match at Lords, but occupies a key position in cricket. Or it was about foreign minister (S Jaishankar), whose son holds a significant position in a think tank even though he is not a foreign services officer. Maybe it was about civil aviation minister (Jyotiraditya Scindia) or the son of Union defence minister (Rajnath Singh). So clearly, the nepotism reference was a reference to BJP’s internal matters,” Khera said.
He also claimed the PM’s speech lacked energy and emotions. Congress held parallel celebrations with a flag-hoisting ceremony at the AICC headquarters.