Rahul Gandhi’s problems

Rahul Gandhi’s problems

Congress president Rahul Gandhi’s woes do not seem to come to an end. While had a trying time to bring his party back to shape despite remarkable victory in three states last year, the ‘chowkidar’ is what has begun haunting him like anything, especially from the day he added the suffix ‘chor’ to it. Indian politicians are known for calling their opponents names. But then, while it was Narendra Modi who set an interesting trend of first calling himself ‘pradhan sewak’ and then ‘chowkidar’, the Congress president has landed up in a legal problem of sorts by passing the ‘Chowkidar hi chor hai’ remark against the prime minister. It was by and large all right till the two were engaged in a game of calling names in the run-up to the current Lok Sabha elections. But then, in his enthusiasm over the name-calling game apparently took him to such an extent that he has attracted a contempt notice from the Supreme Court of India. The Congress president had made a controversial comment after the apex court on April 10, while agreeing to hear review petitions on the Rafale case, rejected the Narendra Modi government’s contention that some classified documents accessed by the media cannot be considered as evidence. Following this, Rahul Gandhi had claimed that the Supreme Court had acknowledged his ‘chowkidar hi chor hai’ slogan which he has been using to corner Modi in the context of the controversial Rafale deal. The BJP on its part took objection to this and its MP Meenakshi Lekhi moved a contempt case against him the Supreme Court. Hearing this petition, a three-member bench of the apex court presided over by Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi took strong exception to Rahul Gandhi’s comment, saying that the Congress president had ‘incorrectly attributed’ the remarks to the Supreme Court. The apex court was not amused when the Congress president had, in response to an earlier notice on the same matter related to his comments involving the Supreme Court’s name, pleaded that he had made the ‘chowkidar hi chor hai’ remark ‘in the heat of the moment.’ Rahul Gandhi also said in his reply that he got ‘carried away’ during campaigning and instead accused the media of ‘mingling’ his words. He also expressed regret for dragging the top court’s name into the comments he made a week ago and also admitted that the Supreme Court had never used the phrase ‘chowkidar hi chor hai’ at all. While the Supreme Court notice came as a big blow to the image of the Congress president, the BJP has picked it up to campaign against Rahul Gandhi and his party, trying to tell the people – the voters in the present context – how the leader of a national party treats the Supreme Court of India. It has definitely adversely affected the Congress party’s image in the middle of the Lok Sabha elections.

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