The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Sunday hit back at the Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi, accusing him of levelling “baseless allegations” against the Narendra Modi-led Union government during his recent Chennai visit, and rejected his claim of an attack on the Tamil language.
The BJP leader said the Congress has been out of power in Tamil Nadu since 1967, a gap of 59 years, and challenged the party to match the Centre’s record on Tamil culture. “Since 1967 you are out of power in Tamil Nadu. The life of Parliament was extended from five years to six, and about 125,000 people were jailed, he said.
He was responding to Rahul Gandhi’s claim that Tamil is under attack with the coming of the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET), which Trivedi called completely wrong. Have you ever done anything of this sort?” he asked. Trivedi also rejected any comparison between the recent barricading, which he described as a one kilometre cordon, and the Emergency. Concluding his address, the BJP spokesperson further attacked Rahul Gandhi and the Congress.
“The reality is that the Tamil language has received full respect in Prime Minister Modi’s tenure, and efforts were made to take its many dimensions beyond the national level to the international level,” Rajya Sabha MP and BJP national spokesperson Sudhanshu Trivedi told reporters. He said the Defence of India Rules allowed jail without bail, suspended fundamental rights and put the opposition behind bars. “Comparing it to a barricade is a mockery of democracy,” he said, adding that many of those who suffered are still alive. “You were not speaking the truth then, and you are not speaking the truth today,” he said, ending with the claim that the BJP under Modi is “proof of credibility.”
