Defeated delimitation bill to defend 'idea of India': Rahul Gandhi

Top Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Saturday said the opposition parties defeated the delimitation bill in the Parliament on Friday to defend the "idea of India," as he mounted an attack against the RSS-BJP.

Addressing a poll rally at Ponneri here, his first campaign for the April 23 Assembly elections in Tamil Nadu, he said the BJP-led government at the Centre brought a new bill on April 16, and said they were trying to pass the women's bill, which he said was adopted in 2023.

"In the so-called Women's Bill, delimitation was hidden. The idea was to reduce Tamil Nadu's representation in the Union of India... the delimitation move by BJP was to weaken the strength of southern states, small states, north eastern states," he alleged.

 

"We defeated in Parliament, a bill in which delimitation was hidden; we defeated it to defend the idea of India," he asserted.

Rahul added that India that is Bharat, is a union of states, and every single state should have a voice, be free to express itself, and protect its tradition.

At the rally he said "election is first an ideological battle, second, political fight; it is coercion versus consensus."  Slamming the BJP, Rahul Gandhi alleged that the saffron party wanted an India "where two or three companies control everything."  It wanted to "crush the ideas of rationalist leader EV Ramasamy 'Periyar', your model of government, and destroy the idea of social justice," he alleged and appealed to the people to "stop this assault by RSS-BJP."  He also lashed out at BJP ally AIADMK, saying it was not the same party that strived for the people of the state.

"When you see AIADMK flag, its leaders, remember they are fully controlled by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and (Union Home minister) Amit Shah because of their corruption. New AIADMK is just a mask; the mask hiding BJP," he alleged.

Flaying the Dravidian party, which leads the NDA in Tamil Nadu, the Congress leader said the AIADMK was "now a hollow shell."  It had a great tradition of defending the people of Tamil Nadu like the DMK, but that "AIADMK died long back", he said.

"The AIADMK has been eaten up from inside by Modi and Amit Shah. The BJP has destroyed AIADMK, there's nothing known as AIADMK now," he said.

However, Congress regards its partners as equals and never tried to crush them using intelligence agencies, Rahul claimed and slammed the Prime Minister for desiring to "rule Tamil Nadu from Delhi."  There is no force on this planet that can touch Tamil Nadu or Tamil language, which was not an ordinary language.

"It is thousands of years of your experience, and memories," the Leader of Opposition in Lok Sabha said.

He also accused AIADMK of allowing BJP to rule the state from Delhi, and take the orders from Amit Shah and Modi.

"Like armies of olden days, BJP wants to attack the Tamil language, destroy history, twist Tamil culture. We will never ever allow it," Rahul said.

When the PM talks about one nation, one leader, one language, one people, he "attacked India's Constitution."  India was a union of states, and every single state should have a voice, be free to express itself, and protect its tradition, he said.