Charges senseless: Minister

Vibha Sharma

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, January 11

Buoyed by the Supreme Court dismissal of a plea for probing the Sahara-Birla diaries, the BJP hit back at Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi for his jibes-laced attack on PM Narendra Modi today.

The ruling party reminded him of decisions taken by governments led by the Congress, which, it said, were “true examples of stifling democracy and destruction of established institutions”.

Rahul’s attack on the PM centered on “his incompetent decision” to scrap high-value notes and attempts at “weakening institutions” that constituted the country’s backbone. But Union Minister Prakash Javadekar said it was the Congress that “destroyed each and every institution in the country’s system” and because Rahul did not have much substance left to argue, he was resorting to “senseless allegations”.

Javadekar also sought to remind Rahul on how when late Sunil Dutt was enrolled in the CWG by the government, his name was struck off by 10 Janpath (the official residence of Congress president Sonia Gandhi) and the name of Suresh Kalmadi announced.

“2G, coal scam and all other scams during the UPA regime destroyed institutions one after the other,” he said, adding that because the poor, who earlier supported the Congress, were now backing the PM and his demonetisation move, the Congress leader was “worried and making senseless allegations on the basis of diaries dismissed by the Supreme Court today”.

In a major relief for the BJP and the PM, the apex court today dismissed senior lawyer Prashant Bhushan’s plea for investigations into the documents seized in Income Tax raids.

Meanwhile, Javadekar's party colleague Shahnawaz Hussain dismissed Rahul as a "part-time politician", mocking him as someone who just returned yesterday from a holiday abroad. "Rahul is a part-time politician. Where was he for the past two weeks? He has just arrived from a vacation and is now talking about demonetisation. If he really cared about people and their plight, he would not have gone for a holiday," he said.