Vice President Jagdeep Dhankhar lambasted India’s Opposition and disqualified Indian National Congress (INC) member of the Parliament Rahul Gandhi while speaking at an event on Thursday, March 30th 2023. Dhankar criticised Gandhi’s alleged bid to seek foreign intervention to “fix” Indian democracy’s problems and accused the Opposition of not allowing the Parliament to function.
The vice president was speaking at an event named Rising India Summit-2023, organised by India’s topmost petroleum-to-retail-to-telecom conglomerate owner Mukesh Ambani’s Network 18 channel in New Delhi. Dhankhar accused Opposition members are engaged in “thoughtless orchestration of sinister campaigns to taint and tarnish our democratic institutions.”
Dhankhar equated the criticisms hurled at Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government with a “virtual intense warfare against India’s integrity” and called upon the audience to remain vigil of “sinister forces, within and without”, who, he alleged, “are working with a pernicious agenda to sully and downsize our growth trajectory and run down our success.” He alleged that an “ecosystem” has been shaped to combat India’s emergence as a global power.
“You will not find a parallel in the world that people holding positions of power would go to other countries to run down their own country”, Dhankhar said criticising Mr Gandhi without naming him. Incidentally, the vice president has reiterated what India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), of which he was a member until his appointment in the gubernatorial office of West Bengal, has been accusing Mr Gandhi of.
The vice president also used the podium to criticise the Opposition’s latest move to approach the Supreme Court, alleging that Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government is unleashing federal agencies against non-BJP legislators and state governments accusing them of corruption while leaving his own ilk immune from any investigation. Without referring to the Opposition’s case, which will be heard by the apex court in April, Dhankhar said, “none in democracy can claim on any ground whatsoever, to be above the law and beyond the reach of the law.”
Dhankhar also praised Modi’s purported cleansing of the system and government reforms. He claimed that the Indian bureaucracy is purged of filth and corruption under the present regime. “Power Corridors, for long infested with people engaging in liaising and whatnot, have now been sanitised. It used to be a lucrative industry at a time”, Dhankar said.
The vice president criticised the Opposition’s stalling of the Parliament over urgent issues. The vice president said the Parliament should be a genuine platform for dialogues, debates, discussions, and deliberations, not a theatre for disruptions and disturbance. Recently, the Indian Opposition, especially the INC, has repeatedly created a ruckus in the Parliament demanding discussion on the alleged stock market manipulation and financial scams committed by the Adani Group, which is reportedly close to Modi’s BJP. The INC and the Opposition have also vehemently opposed the disqualification of Gandhi following his conviction.
As part of the programme arranged by Ambani’s television network, Dhankhar also inaugurated a book on Modi’s radio programme ‘Mann Ki Baat’ (Words From The Heart) named “Voice of India-Modi and His Transformative Mann ki Baat”. The book reportedly praised the prime minister’s radio programme for its transformative qualities and for laying the foundation of a new India.
