(MENAFN- IANS) Mumbai/Pune, Nov 8 (IANS) Nationalist congress Party (SP) Working President Supriya Sule on Friday said that henceforth, her party leaders would display copies of the constitution in their campaign for the November 20 Maharashtra Assembly elections.
Speaking to mediapersons, she slammed the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) for its 'serial assaults on the Constitution', and raising objections to Congress' Leader of Opposition in Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi for showing the Constitution copy in his public meetings.
In the past few days, Maharashtra Deputy CM Devendra Fadnavis of the BJP, in a media interview and in interactions, alleged that Rahul Gandhi is encircled by 'Urban Naxals', anarchists and anti-national forces, is less of a Congressman and transformed more into an ultra-Left ideologue, and how he flaunts a Constitution copy with a 'red cover' instead of the traditional blue.
Late on Thursday, Rahul Gandhi finally reacted, and without taking names but referring to Fadnavis, said that "showing Babasaheb Ambedkar's Constitution and raising voice for Caste Census is a Naxalite idea" for the BJP.
He said that by this, the BJP is 'insulting' the Chief Architect of the Indian Constitution, Dr. B. R. Ambedkar, and vowed that“the people of Maharashtra will not tolerate any insult by the BJP – together with the Congress and Maha Vikas Aghadi, they will defend our Constitution by responding with full force to every attack on it”.
Against this backdrop, Sule trained guns at Fadnavis for objecting to Rahul Gandhi's decision to carry the Constitution with him and showing it in his public speeches during the ongoing polls campaign.
“If showing a copy of the Constitution is a crime, then it is acceptable to us. Let Fadnavis arrest us all. We will not desert the Constitution, we are immensely proud of it and shall protect it till our last breaths. Henceforth, all our leaders will now sport a copy of the Constitution till the elections are over,” thundered Sule.
Shiv Sena (UBT) MP Priyanka Chaturvedi lauded Sule's statement saying that her party President Uddhav Thackeray had also displayed the copy of the Constitution recently, and it had been regularly discussed even during the Lok Sabha elections.
“We are also very concerned by the attacks on the Constitution. This Sunday (November 10), I shall be attending a 'Samvidhan Sanman Sammelan' by the Congress. We are all bound to protect the Constitution," said Chaturvedi.
A senior Congress leader in Mumbai said that Rahul Gandhi's move to keep a Constitution copy with him has rattled the BJP badly, and now, they have launched a campaign to discourage others from following suit, but the strategy has 'misfired' as the masses will never abandon the Constitution.
Yesterday (Thursday), Congress' top leaders like Ramesh Chennithala, Jairam Ramesh, Pawan Khera, Nana Patole, M. Arif Naseem Khan, Nana Patole and others defended Rahul Gandhi from the BJP's darts.
Chennithala said the BJP's move will fail, Ramesh felt it as a sign of desperation before the state Assembly elections, while Khera asked the state Deputy CM if he had noticed the colour of the Constitution when he took the 'world famous secret oath of office' in the dawn of November 22, 2019, at Maharashtra Raj Bhavan, referring to the infamous 80-hour long regime of Fadnavis-Ajit Pawar.
State Congress President Nana F. Patole and Spokesperson Atul Londhe have said that the colour 'red' is considered very auspicious but the people who are trying to destroy the Constitution find the same (red) colour as impure.
(Quaid Najmi can be contacted at: ...)
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