NEW DELHI: The Congress on Monday alleged that the Modi government "heckled" Leader of Opposition Rahul Gandhi to stop him from speaking in the Lok Sabha on the India-China border conflict of 2020 from former Army chief Manoj Naravane's "memoir" as it was afraid that the "truth of its incompetence" would be exposed.
Congress general secretary K C Venugopal said that the government had deployed senior-most Cabinet ministers and "misused" rules to "silence" Gandhi in the House.
"This faux nationalist government is so afraid of the truth of their incompetence coming out that they have deployed a bunch of seniormost Cabinet Ministers to prevent LOP Sh. Rahul Gandhi ji from speaking.
"They moved heaven and earth to stall the publishing of Ex Army Chief Gen. Manoj Naravane ji’s book - and now when excerpts are coming out which expose their so-called nationalist commitments, they are heckling and silencing the Leader of Opposition," the Congress leader said in a post on X.
He alleged that by "blatantly misinterpreting the rules of procedure, the Government is depriving the House and the people of India from knowing about their Himalayan blunders in the conflict against China".
"It is a textbook case of 21st-century fascism, where first you stifle dissent in public, and then misuse rules to further silence your opponents," Venugopal alleged.
A row erupted in the Lok Sabha on Monday when Rahul Gandhi sought to quote from the unpublished "memoir" of Naravane but Defence Minister Rajnath Singh, along with other BJP members, strongly opposed it and accused the Congress leader of "misleading" the House.
The House was adjourned twice due to the uproar over the issue.
As Gandhi rose to speak on the Motion of Thanks to the president's address, he said he would first like to respond to the charges made by the previous speaker, BJP MP Tejasvi Surya, against the Congress on nationalism and began quoting from what he stated was the "memoir" of Naravane talking about the India-China conflict of 2020.
However, Singh strongly protested this and asked Gandhi to clarify whether the book had been published or not.