New Delhi, March 18
The Ministry of External Affairs parliamentary consultative committee meeting on India’s G 20 presidency veered into a Rahul Gandhi-BJP face off on Saturday after MPs of the ruling party questioned the former’s remarks made in London about Indian democracy without naming him.
Gandhi defended his controversial remarks saying he had “not asked for the intervention of any foreign country on the matter.”
Gandhi said “Indian democracy is under attack and that is evident.”
The Congress MP also mentioned ED raids asking whether or not “ED was targeting the opposition.”
The Congress MP is also learnt to have said “the Hindenburg report was not an attack on India, it was against one industrialist Gautam Adani and his financial dealings.”
“Adani is not India,” sources quoted Gandhi as saying.
Earlier in the meeting where the floor was opened for all MPs after foreign secretary’s G 20 presentation, BJP MP GVL Narasimha Rao said concerted efforts were underway to destabilise India’s “historic” G 20 presidency.
Rao said the “Hindenburg report, the remarks of George Soros and the BBC documentary were all motivated attempts to undermine India’s moment.”
Rao also, without naming Gandhi, said “some people have spoken….but the fact is the biggest blot on Indian democracy was the Emergency.”
Uddhav Thackeray Sena’s MP Priyanka Chaturvedi sought to argue that if India is a confident nation and “mother of democracy, it should not be a sensitive democracy which will get weakened by random comments by individuals or by a BBC documentary.”
