The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Wednesday accused Congress MP Rahul Gandhi of enacting a drama over his visit to Sambhal to “appease” the party’s Muslim vote bank. The Uttar Pradesh police stopped Gandhi at the Delhi-UP border today, preventing him from visiting the violence-hit city in the BJP-ruled state.
Uttar Pradesh deputy chief minister Keshav Prasad Maurya slammed Congress leader Rahul Gandhi over his attempted Sambhal visit.
“Both Akhilesh and Rahul are trying to do politics to get Muslim votes. They are enacting a drama. The decline of SP and Congress is certain. SP will become ‘Samaptawadi Party’ and there will be Congress-mukt Bharat,” Maurya said.
He said Sambhal violence – in which four people died on November 24 – was a fallout of Samajwadi Party MLA and MP’s rivalry.
BJP’s national spokesperson Sudhanshu Trivedi said Gandhi wanted to visit Sambhal without giving prior intimation to authorities. He said the Congress and the Samajwadi Party were fighting for Muslim votes.
“Rahul Gandhi had gone there without taking his partner in the INDI Alliance with him just to grab media attention. There is a conflict going on between the two parties,” Trivedi said in an apparent reference to the Congress and the Samajwadi party.
Trivedi said Gandhi did not try to visit Sambhal out of “any sympathy” but to grab media attention and get a “better photo-op” than the leaders of his party’s ally Samajwadi Party.
He said Gandhi, who is the Leader of the Opposition in Lok Sabha, was required to give a prior intimation to the authorities about his visit because he has been the “highest level of security” after the prime minister.
“Rahul Gandhi has Z-plus ASL security. ASL means advanced security liaison. This is the highest level of security after the prime minister’s. Only the Home Minister and the Defence Minister have this security besides him (Gandhi),” he said.
“If you honestly wanted to go there (Sambhal) and he had some sympathy, he would have given an intimation (to the authorities) in advance…You did not have any intention to go there. You just did a formality and then returned,” he added.
He said the two parties wanted to capture their core vote.
“This so-called yatra of the Congress was motivated by mutual competition among the parties in the INDI alliance to capture and get hold of the core vote. The core vote for which INDI Alliance constituents came together. Nowhere any sympathy for people is visible in it,” the BJP Rajya Sabha MP added.
Rahul Gandhi, whose convoy returned from the Ghazipur border, said the authorities had infringed upon his right as the Leader of the Opposition.
The Sambhal violence erupted during a survey ordered by a local court to ascertain the presence of remnants of a Hindu temple inside a Mughal-era mosque.
With inputs from PTI