|HT|
Keeping up the government’s attack on Congress leader Rahul Gandhi after his recent remarks in Parliament in which he had alleged that the foreign policy decisions of the BJP-led central government have brought all-weather allies China and Pakistan together against India, defence minister Rajnath Singh on Friday reminded the Congress leader of two illegal occupations in international territory during his great grandfather Jawaharlal Nehru and grandmother Indira Gandhi’s tenure as Prime Ministers. Rajnath Singh was in Punjab to campaign for BJP’s Dasuya candidate Raghunath Singh Rana on Friday. Accompanied by Union minister Som Prakash, senior BJP leader Avinash Rai Khanna, the defence minister said: “There are some powers who speak whatever comes to their mind. Does Rahul not know history? Pakistan handed over the Shaksgam Valley to China and at that time Nehru was the Prime Minister of India. Not only that, the Karakoram highway was constructed in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir when the Prime Minister of India was not from the BJP but Indira Gandhi of the Congress. And you (Rahul) say that Pakistan and China came closer due to BJP’s wrong foreign policies? Work on the China and Pakistan economic corridor began during the Congress rule.” Addressing the function, Rajnath Singh said: “I will seek an apology from my Congress friends. Whatever Rahul Gandhi said on the floor of Parliament has deeply hurt us. He has tried to distort historic facts and wrongly accused the BJP-led central government.” Rajnath Singh said that Indian soldiers had made the supreme sacrifice in the Galwan Valley and thwarted the designs of the Chinese army. “Our soldiers laid down their lives but didn’t let China occupy an inch of India’s land. He (Rahul) had said that India lost more soldiers, while only four soldiers of China lost their lives in Galwan. Would you believe China’s official newspaper Global Times? Now, a leading Australian paper has reported that China reported 38-40 casualties. When our jawans were fighting Chinese soldiers in Galwan, you (Rahul) were busy meeting with the Chinese ambassador in Delhi,” Singh said.
(Except for the headline and the pictorial description, this story has not been edited by THE DEN staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)