Need structures to fight polls: Rahul Gandhi to Nicholas Burns
New Delhi, April 3
Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Friday night said he needed institutional structures and protection to fight elections but did not have them.
In a virtual conversation with Harvard Kennedy professor and former US Under Secretary of State Nicholas Burns, Gandhi alleged that the BJP had indulged in “wholesale capture of institutions” and asked “what the US had done about what was going on in India”. Raking up the Assam Karimganj issue where EVMs were transported in a BJP candidate’s car leading to the EC suspending four officers and ordering a repoll, Rahul said BJP men were transporting voting machines.
HE’S showing India in poor light: BJP
- The BJP has slammed Congress leader Rahul Gandhi for “seeking US interference in India’s internal matters” and showing the country in “poor light”.
- BJP IT cell in charge Amit Malviya said “at a time when Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Home Minister Amit Shah, BJP president JP Nadda and other senior party leaders were campaigning in poll-bound states, Rahul was busy calling up professors in the US.
“In Assam, the person running our campaign has been sending me videos of BJP candidates running around with voting machines in their cars. He is screaming, saying look, I have a really serious problem here. But there is nothing going on in the national media…there is wholesale capture of the country’s institutional framework,” Rahul said.
“It is not just the Congress, even the BSP is not winning an election, the SP is not winning an election, the NCP is not winning an election. To fight elections, I need institutional structures, a judicial system that protects me, a media that is reasonably free, financial parity, institutional structures that allow me to operate as a party,” he said. — tns
