In Amethi to Woo the Voters, Rahul Gandhi Pauses Rally Speech For Azaan

Amethi: Congress president Rahul Gandhi on Saturday paused his speech during an election rally in Amethi when the Azaan, the Islamic call for prayer, sounded from a nearby mosque.

Gandhi, who is holding rallies in Congress bastion seats Raebareili and Amethi, stayed silent till the prayer ended and then resumed his speech.

In March last year, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had also paused his victory speech to party workers midway on hearing the Azaan from a mosque near the party’s new headquarters in New Delhi. He stayed silent for two minutes and the party workers also remained still till the time the call for prayer continued. As soon as it got over, PM Modi resumed his speech with chants of ‘Bharat Mata ki Jai’ and the party workers joined him with great fervour.

During the campaign for Gujarat elections in November 2017, too, the PM, speaking at a rally in Navsari, had stopped briefly to let Azaan finish. In 2016, PM Modi stopped his speech for over five minutes during an election rally in West Bengal’s Kharagpur when he heard the sound of Azaan.

In 2014, BJP president Amit Shah had done the same. Addressing a rally in Kolkata, Shah paused when the muezzin's call for prayers was sounded from a mosque close by and said he didn't want to give West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee an excuse to speak against him.