NEW DELHI: The BJP on Friday called Congress MP Rahul Gandhi "jhooth ki dukan" and said he along with others in the opposition benches was looking away when the Congress was exposed by the treasury benches under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah during debates on Vande Mataram and election reforms in Parliament.
This came after Gandhi, the Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha, hailed his party members' performance during the debates on the two topics in both Houses of Parliament, and claimed that the government was taken to the cleaners by the opposition.
Hitting back, BJP national spokesperson Prem Shukla said, "Rahul Gandhi says the opposition ripped the BJP members apart (dhajjiyan uda di). On the contrary, Rahul Gandhi and others in the opposition were looking away when the Congress was exposed with proof by the members of the treasury benches under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah during the debates on Vande Mataram and Election Reforms."
"The entire country saw it... Rahul Gandhi is adamant on proving himself to be a 'jhooth ki dukan' (shop of lies)," he told reporters at the BJP headquarters here.
The BJP spokesperson said the country also saw how the entire opposition "fled" from the Lok Sabha the moment Shah "reiterated" the Modi government's "resolve" to drive the 'ghuspaithiyas' (infiltrators) out of the country.
"The entire country saw how Rahul Gandhi and the members of the other opposition parties were ripped apart on the issue of 'ghuspaithiyas'," he added.
Shukla said that Shah told Parliament during debates on the two topics "with proof" as to how Jawaharlal Nehru, the country's first prime minister, "compromised" on the issue of Vande Mataram's stanzas in the original version of the national song.
Intervening in the discussion on Election reforms, the Union home minister also gave a "logical and evidence-based" rebuttal to the opposition's allegations against the Special Intensive Review (SIR) of the electoral rolls by the Election Commission, the BJP spokesperson said.
"The Congress is not in a position to counter his (Shah's) response," he added.
The BJP spokesperson also slammed the leader of the opposition over his remarks that Shah got "scared" by the opposition attack, and said, "Rahul Gandhi, you feel scared and you have accepted it."
"When Sonia Gandhi was named the Congress president post, both the son and the daughter were scared of what would happen if she was made president of the party," Shukla claimed in an apparent reference to Gandhi and his sister Priyank Gandhi Vadra, who is now an MP from Kerala's Wayanad Lok Sabha constituency.
"Amit Shah was not scared even when the erstwhile UPA government remained busy day and night in conspiring to implicate him and Narendra Modi, then chief minister of Gujarat, in false cases," he added.
The BJP spokesperson also took a swipe at the Congress over the absence of its MP Shashi Tharoor in Gandhi's meeting with the party's Lok Sabha members in the Parliament House complex on Friday, saying, "All Congress leaders are preparing to leave the Congress' sinking ship."
Tharoor could not attend the meeting as he was travelling out of the station.
The BJP spokesperson alleged, "The Congress is a sinking ship with no visible possibility of its survival. All the Congress leaders keep talking about the party's fate," he said.
"But I don't know how Rahul Gandhi is living with such arrogance. He says, 'paksh ki dhajjiyan uda di (his party members ripped the government apart)," he added.