Union home minister Amit Shah on Friday termed Rahul Gandhi’s Voter Adhikar Yatra in poll-bound Bihar as “Ghuspetiya Bachao Yatra” and demanded an apology from the Congress leader for the alleged abuses hurled at Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his late mother at a rally in Darbhanga.
Shah was speaking at the inauguration of the Brahmaputra wing of the Raj Bhavan and other projects here.
The ruling BJP has been gunning for Rahul ever since a video surfaced on Thursday purportedly showing a Congress “activist” mouthing abuses against Modi and his mother from the Yatra dais in Darbhanga that the Rae Bareli MP had earlier used to address a rally before proceeding to Muzaffarpur.
Bihar Police on Friday said that the man had been arrested.
The Congress has distanced itself from the incident.
Shah said Modi was respected by the whole world, with 27 countries honouring him with their highest civilian award. “But in Indian politics, an example of the low-level and hate politics Congress leader Rahul Gandhi has initiated was seen in the Ghuspetiya Bachao Yatra he has taken out in Bihar. Abusive words were hurled at Prime Minister Modi’s late mother from the stage of a programme in Bihar. It was a despicable act by Congress leaders. I condemn this,” Shah said.
He said there could be no greater decline in public life and politics than “abusing Modi’s mother, who lived in a poor household but raised a son who is now a world leader”.
“What do Congress leaders think? By using such language, they will win the people’s mandate? I want to tell Congress leaders today, the more you abuse Modi, the more will the lotus bloom,” the home minister asserted.
Congress leader Pawan Khera said he suspected the “BJP toolkit” at work. “We would like to know who had instigated the person to indulge in such behaviour. It is obvious that we would not do anything that would take the focus away from the Yatra. The BJP toolkit works by planting such elements in gatherings of Opposition parties so that its leaders can later on raise a hue and cry,” Khera said.
Congress general secretary (communications) Jairam Ramesh posted on X: “The Union Home Minister is a 2-in-1 WMD — a Weapon of Mischievous Distraction and also a Weapon of Malicious Defamation. Rattled, disturbed and unnerved by the extraordinary response of the people of Bihar to the INC’s Voter Adhikar Yatra, he is spreading lies about Rahul Gandhi and other leaders.”
Against the backdrop of the abuse row, BJP and Congress workers clashed in Patna on Friday during a protest rally taken out by the ruling party.
Attending a Panchayat Pratinidhi Sammelan in Guwahati, Shah and Assam chief minister Himanta Biswa Sarma said “the fight against infiltrators in the state would continue till every inch of land encroached by them was freed”.
“No matter how much the Opposition protests, the BJP government will free every inch of land from the clutches of infiltrators. Already, the government under Himanta Biswa Sarma has reclaimed lakhs of bighas of land from encroachers,” Shah said at the meeting.
Shah said Assam could not be represented by people who sympathised with infiltrators and encroachers, signalling that infiltration would be the BJP-led alliance’s key poll plank in the Assam elections early next year.