New Delhi : Congress president Rahul Gandhi at the party\u2019s 133rd foundation day in New Delhi on Thursday.
\nCongress president Rahul Gandhi on Thursday stepped up the attack on the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) over Union minister Ananth Kumar Hegde\u2019s remarks about the Constitution, saying it is \u201cdistressing\u201d to see the country\u2019s foundation under threat both directly and surreptitiously.<\/p>\n
Gandhi did not name Hegde but said that senior BJP members had made the statements against the Constitution.<\/p>\n
\u201cToday, it is distressing to see the Constitution, the foundation of our country, under threat. It is under attack directly, statements are being made by senior BJP members and it is under attack surreptitiously from the back,\u201d Gandhi said at a ceremony to commemorate the 133rd foundation day of the Congress party.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is our duty, the duty of the Congress party and every single Indian to defend the Constitution and to defend the right of every citizen and every single person,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
The Congress-led opposition has been demanding the ouster of Hegde from the Union council of ministers for his controversial remarks at a function in Karnataka on Sunday that the \u201cBJP will change the Constitution and remove the word secular from it.\u201d<\/p>\n
The opposition created an uproar in Parliament on Wednesday over the remarks disrupting proceedings in both the Houses, prompting the government to disassociate itself from Hegde\u2019s comments.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe do not agree with the minister\u2019s statement … We are fully committed to the Constitution,\u201d said minister of state for parliamentary affairs Vijay Goel in the Rajya Sabha.<\/p>\n
But Goel\u2019s statement failed to placate the agitated opposition members who maintained that Hedge has no \u201cright to remain a minister if he does not have faith\u201d in the Constitution.<\/p>\n
\u201cHow can he be a minister? He has no right to be a minister. He has no right to be an MP. If anyone does not believe in the Constitution, he or she has no right to be an MP,\u201d Leader of the Opposition in the Rajya Sabha Ghulam Nabi Azad said.<\/p>\n
On Thursday, the Congress and other opposition members will protest near the statue of Mahatma Gandhi in the Parliament House complex against Hegde\u2019s remarks.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe BJP operates on the basic idea that a lie can be used for political benefits. That\u2019s the basic difference between the Congress and the BJP. Somehow, we might not do well, we might even lose but we will not give up the truth. We will defend the truth,\u201d he said in an apparent reference to the party\u2019s defeats in the recent assembly elections in Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe central idea of the Congress party is the truth. We accept the truth, we work with the truth and we fight for the truth,\u201d he said after hoisting the Congress flag at the party headquarters in Delhi.<\/p>\n
Gandhi took over the reigns of the grand old party that was founded on December 28, 1885, from his mother Sonia Gandhi.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
New Delhi : Congress president Rahul Gandhi at the party\u2019s 133rd foundation day in New Delhi on Thursday. Congress president Rahul Gandhi on Thursday stepped up the attack on the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) over Union minister Ananth Kumar Hegde\u2019s remarks about the Constitution, saying it is \u201cdistressing\u201d to see the country\u2019s foundation under […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":16176,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[312,315],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16175","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-india","category-top-stories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16175","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16175"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16175\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16177,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16175\/revisions\/16177"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16176"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16175"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16175"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16175"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}