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Analysis | Share This Page | |||||||||
Rahul’s Spectacular Self-goal! |
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by Dr. Rajinder Puri |
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Delhi Law Minister Mr. Somnath Bharti asked a media person: “How much did Narendra Modi pay you?” This provoked uproar in the media and invited stringent criticism. Perhaps the media is doing Mr. Bharti injustice. He may not have been taunting the media but genuinely seeking information. Can it not be that after receiving payment from Mr. Modi for services rendered through destroying the credibility of the Aam Admi party (AAP) Mr. Bharti was curious to know what payment others were receiving? And if indeed Mr. Modi is distributing largesse for those who help his campaign one must seriously consider what payment the closest advisers of Mr. Rahul Gandhi must have received from him. In his latest much advertised television interview Mr. Gandhi gave a huge boost to the electoral fortunes of Mr. Modi. Among other vacuous observations made by him consider what he said.
Mr. Gandhi may have been a child then, he seems to be childishly ignorant and even foolish today. He has raked up an issue that deserves to be buried. Hr has handed on a platter huge propaganda advantage to Mr. Narendra Modi. There is much that can be said against Mr. Modi’s record of governance that has been frequently mentioned by this writer. His handling of the Maya Kodnani case needed much to be desired. His allowing continuance in official positions ministers charged with corruption also violates appropriate democratic norms. But the riots in Gujarat a decade after occurrence need to be buried, especially since there have not been any communal incidents since then.
I preferred to desist from attributing personal motives to either leader but focused only on the administrative lapses that undeniably occurred. Although Mr. Modi has never acknowledged any administrative failure, clearly the RSS has. Otherwise Goa Chief Minister Mr. Manohar Parrikar would not have echoed the views of this writer to state that an administrative failure had indeed occurred during the Gujarat riots. Further on in his interview Mr. Gandhi acknowledged that “some Congressmen probably were involved” in the Delhi violence. Among those responsible for the violence were his father Rajiv Gandhi and relative Arun Nehru.
I can state with full responsibility that on the very first day of the violence senior army commanders stationed in Delhi advised the government that they could control the situation immediately. The government rejected the offer and told the army not to interfere. For over three days goons from jhuggi colonies were encouraged by the police to loot and kill at will under their benign protection. I closely monitored the situation on the ground and visited various affected areas of the city. I wrote a first person account of what happened during 1984 in an article published in the Chandigarh Tribune newspaper in November 2003. Therefore Mr. Gandhi’s assertion is far, far from the truth.
The electoral damage to the Congress inflicted by Mr. Gandhi’s interview is irreversible. The blatant falsehoods uttered by him have irredeemably scarred public perception. Most likely the 1984 genocide issue will now linger on in public memory to become one more nail driven into the Congress coffin after the 2014 poll. |
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29-Jan-2014 | ||||||||||
More by : Dr. Rajinder Puri | ||||||||||
Views: 1081 Comments: 3 | ||||||||||
Comments on this Article
pranlal 02/02/2014 19:11 PM
Dinesh Kumar Bohre 01/31/2014 09:02 AM
Dinesh Kumar Bohre 01/30/2014 05:22 AM |
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