NEW DELHI:In a clear sign that the Congress was in a mood to settle scores over the humiliation heaped on it during the scam-ridden UPA years, the main Opposition party on Monday trained its guns a notch above External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj in the Lalit Modi affair. The new target was Prime Minister Narendra Modi himself.
First, there was an aggressive demonstration by the Youth Congress in front of Sushma’s Lutyen’s zone bungalow. In the afternoon, the party’s media in-charge Randip Surjewala displayed photographs to buttress his Modi & Modi thesis, apart from hurling his second set of 11 questions at the NDA Government.
All this was topped by Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi speaking in a way that showed the Congress strategy was to inflict maximum damage on the NDA Government and it’s talismanic Prime Minister. “ Mr Modi is standing behind Mr Modi. Who is Sushma Swaraj-ji? She is a minor minister and she means nothing in this government. There is only one man who is running this government and he is Narendra Modi and Narendra Modi should stop protecting Lalit Modi,” Rahul said, repeating Surjewala’s pun.
Earlier in the day, a top Congress leader indicated to Express that Rahul wanted an unrelenting campaign, so that the government did not escape unscathed and the Opposition drew blood as Modi Government was crowing about having a scam-free first year. In this it was mostly helped by a concerted responses from the Opposition parties, baring the Samajwadis. Whether the controversy blows up from one involving ‘impropriety’ and ‘conflict of interest’ into something bigger or not, the Opposition has clearly not let the government off the hook.
A recurring theme in the Opposition voices -- the CPM, the CPI, the NCP, and the AAP -- related to conspicuous silence even as it was rumoured that factionalism within the BJP was to blame for the story coming out into the public domain.
The Shiv Sena, a votary of Sushma since Sena founder, the late Bal Thackeray’s days joined those supporting her.
