'Desire to Rule...Gave India to Brits': Sambit Patra Draws Parallel Between Rahul Gandhi & Mir Jafar

BJP leader Sambit Patra on Tuesday called Rahul Gandhi ‘the present-day Mir Jafar of India Polity’ for “insulting India and asking foreign power to intervene in the country”.

“Rahul Gandhi will have to apologise in Parliament. He always defames the nation. He is the present-day Mir Jafar of India Polity. He insulted the country and asked a foreign power to intervene. This is a consistent ‘conspiracy’ of the Congress and Rahul Gandhi. His participation is least in Parliament and he says that no one allows him to speak,” Patra said at press conference before Tuesday’s Parliament session.

“This is nothing different than what Mir Jafar did. What Mir Jafar did to become the Nawab, you all must be knowing it. He always had the desire to rule and to do so, he took the help of the East India Company. After which, the country was ruled by Britishers,” Patra added.

During his interactions in the United Kingdom recently, the former Congress chief alleged that the structures of Indian democracy were under attack and that there was a “full-scale assault” on the country’s institutions.

The remarks have triggered a massive political row, with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) accusing Gandhi of maligning India on foreign soil and seeking external interventions and the Congress hitting back, citing instances of Prime Minister Modi raising internal politics abroad.

Gandhi reportedly spoke at length about his speech in London during a Parliamentary panel meet on Saturday. A report in NDTV quoted sources as saying that the Wayanad MP said that he only raised questions about India’s democracy, and could not be labelled “anti-national” for that.

The report stated that Gandhi also added he did not ask any other country to intervene. The Parliamentary Consultative Committee was chaired by the External Affairs Ministry.

The NDTV report further stated that Gandhi did not speak in the opening round, but responded after a MP raised the issue of political leaders trying to score brownie points by talking about Indian democracy on foreign land.

A day ago, Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge said time has been sought for Rahul Gandhi to speak in the Lok Sabha on Tuesday and he will make his statement if allowed.

“We have asked for a time tomorrow (Tuesday). If allowed, he (Rahul Gandhi) will speak in Parliament. That is what we have been trying for.” “This is the problem, we are not even allowed to speak in democracy, microphones are switched off and when we said this, they made allegations. You can see one person wants to give his personal explanation and he is not being given a chance,” Kharge said.

Earlier, Union minister Smriti Irani had come down heavily on the Wayanad MP over his speech at the London varsity. “Rahul Gandhi claims that he does not have the access to conversations at Indian University, which for him was an indication of the death of democracy. If so, in 2016, when the slogan ‘Bharat tere tukde honge’ was raised at one of the universities in the national capital, you backed it, what was that?,” she had asked.

“Rahul Gandhi’s hatred for the Prime Minister is now hatred for the nation. He invoked foreign powers by visiting a country whose history has been to enslave India. While tearing down India’s democratic systems, he expressed regret that why foreign forces do not come and attack India,” Irani had added.

Read all the Latest Politics News here