Congress on Sunday countered the scathing attacks launched by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on MP Rahul Gandhi over his ‘China has grabbed the grazing land in Ladakh’ claims. Responding to the BJP attacks, Congress leader Salman Khurshid said that four fingers point at them if they point one at the Congress. He also said that his party wouldn’t let the country’s image tarnish.
“If they [the BJP] point a finger at us then four fingers are pointing back at them…We can bear the pain but we will not let the country’s image tarnish,” Salman Khurshid said.
Earlier in the day, Rahul Gandhi, who has travelled to Ladakh to pay tributes to his father and former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi on his birth anniversary, said PM Narendra Modi’s assertion that China has not claimed a single inch of the Indian territory was not true.
The people of Ladakh are concerned about their grazing land “taken over by the Chinese Army”, Rahul Gandhi said.
Lashing out at Rahul Gandhi, BJP MP Ravi Shankar Prasad alleged that the Congress MP was defaming India by making statements like Beijing’s “propaganda machinery”.
“Rahul Gandhi ji, you are raising questions over our soldiers’ bravery and sacrifice in Galwan… Why do you defame India visiting there? Why do you become China’s propaganda machinery? Rahul Gandhi, whenever you visit border area you say something and you offer propaganda to China against India,” Ravi Shankar Prasad said.
The former Union minister said, “They [Congress] ask for proof of the Balakot and Uri attacks. What can we even expect from them?… Today, when Rahul Gandhi talks about Ladakh, I want to ask him if remembers how much of India’s land was captured by China before & after the 1962 war…The then Defence Minister AK Antony in the Parliament had said that ‘We don’t want to irritate China by erecting infrastructure’…This is your past.”
The BJP leader questioned Rahul Gandhi’s understanding of issues related to India’s security and appealed to the Congress leader to not weaken the morale of the country with such remarks.
India-China ties nosedived significantly following the fierce clash in the Galwan Valley in June 2020 that marked the most serious military conflict between the two sides in decades.
(With agency inputs)
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Updated: 20 Aug 2023, 06:12 PM IST
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