Rahul dares PM to jail him

Urges Modi not to use his cronies to 'throw mud' at him and his family

In a foreshadow of possibly how things will play out in the upcoming winter session, an unusually aggressive Congress Vice-President Rahul Gandhi on Thursday dared Prime Minister Narendra Modi to  use all investigate agencies at his disposal to dig up dirt on him.

In a direct challenge to the PM, Rahul said he was not afraid of being jailed and urged Modi to not use his cronies to attack him for he would continue to fight for the dispossessed and the underprivileged. Rahul’s statement was a reaction to Subramanian Swamy alleging that Rahul had declared himself to be a British citizen in the UK’s Companies House records. An irate Congress had hit out at the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) for spreading falsehood about its top leadership.

This recent incident has already vitiated the tenuous relations between the Opposition Congress and the BJP-led government. Of late, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley has been sending out feelers of seeking cooperation from the Opposition in getting the legislative business going, including goods and services tax, but evidence on the ground shows little thaw in the frosty relations between both sides.

Rahul, who was addressing delegates at the Youth Congress celebrations of the late Prime Minister Indira Gandhi’s 98th birthday, said, “Ever since I was a child, I have been watching people from the RSS and the BJP throwing mud at my grandmother, my father and even my mother. All kinds of allegations are levelled against me. There is not even an iota of truth in them.”

The Congress vice-president, who is slated to be party president soon, went on to state: “You (Modi) talk of a 56-inch chest. Why not instead get a probe done against me and send me behind bars if you find something amiss? Stop having your cronies throw mud at me and my family. You are not in the Opposition anymore, but in government.”

Rejecting the notion that the Congress with its 40-odd MPs was incapable of taking the government to task, Rahul reminded the young Congress cadre that it was those few Congress MPs who had stalled the government’s much-touted land Bill. He asserted that if the Congress ideology was intact, then in the upcoming Assembly polls the party is assured of a “clean sweep”.