Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi’s scathing attack on the BJP, accusing it of stifling dissent in the wake of the dastardly gunning down of journalist Gauri Lankesh on Tuesday, drew a sharp response from Union Minister Nitin Gadkari.
He rejected what he described as “baseless allegations,” and asserted that the BJP and groups affiliated to it had “nothing to do” with the murder. He said Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who is abroad now, should not be expected to speak on every issue.
Fifty-five-year-old Ms. Lankesh, known for her incisive, independent and courageous reports and anti-Hindutva commentaries in the Kannada paper Gauri Lankesh she edited, was shot dead outside her Bengaluru residence late on Tuesday evening.
Mr. Gandhi’s remarks came in the wake of the telephone calls he and Congress president Sonia Gandhi made to Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah. “Spoke to the CM of Karnataka and mentioned that it’s very important that people who have murdered Gauri Lankesh are caught and punished,” he tweeted later.
Mr. Gandhi, who had tweeted on the killing on Tuesday night, sent out a second tweet on Wednesday: “Anybody who speaks against the RSS/BJP is attacked & even killed. They want to impose only one ideology which is against the nature of India.” He directed his attack on Prime Minister Narendra Modi too. “Sometimes the PM speaks under pressure but the entire idea is to crush dissent and this is resulting in a very serious problem in India.”
Mr. Gandhi said the Prime Minister was a skilled Hindutva politician. “Unke shabdo mein 2 meanings hote hain. Unke base ke liye ek hota hai, baaki duniya ke liye alag. (Modi’s words have two meanings — one for his support base and the other for the rest of the world).”
The BJP leadership, by and large, ignored what was now being referred to as an assassination, with only the MoS for Youth Affairs and Sports Rajyavardhan Rathore, party general secretary P. Murlidhar Rao and Union Information and Broadcasting Minister Smriti Irani, tweeting their dismay at the incident.
But after Mr. Gandhi’s accusation, Mr. Gadkari reacted.
“The present government, the BJP or any of its organisations are nowhere linked to her death. Sometimes our supporters have killed them and even our opponents have been murdered and both kinds of incidents are condemned,” he said.