Constitution is under attack by BJP: Rahul Gandhi at Congress foundation day

Congress president Rahul Gandhi on Thursday stepped up the attack on the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) over Union minister Ananth Kumar Hegde’s remarks about the Constitution, saying it is “distressing” to see the country’s foundation under threat both directly and surreptitiously.

Gandhi did not name Hegde but said that senior BJP members had made the statements against the Constitution.

“Today, it is distressing to see the Constitution, the foundation of our country, under threat. It is under attack directly, statements are being made by senior BJP members and it is under attack surreptitiously from the back,” Gandhi said at a ceremony to commemorate the 133rd foundation day of the Congress party.

“It is our duty, the duty of the Congress party and every single Indian to defend the Constitution and to defend the right of every citizen and every single person,” he added.

The Congress-led opposition has been demanding the ouster of Hegde from the Union council of ministers for his controversial remarks at a function in Karnataka on Sunday that the “BJP will change the Constitution and remove the word secular from it.”

The opposition created an uproar in Parliament on Wednesday over the remarks disrupting proceedings in both the Houses, prompting the government to disassociate itself from Hegde’s comments.

“We do not agree with the minister’s statement ... We are fully committed to the Constitution,” said minister of state for parliamentary affairs Vijay Goel in the Rajya Sabha.

But Goel’s statement failed to placate the agitated opposition members who maintained that Hedge has no “right to remain a minister if he does not have faith” in the Constitution.

“How can he be a minister? He has no right to be a minister. He has no right to be an MP. If anyone does not believe in the Constitution, he or she has no right to be an MP,” Leader of the Opposition in the Rajya Sabha Ghulam Nabi Azad said.

On Thursday, the Congress and other opposition members will protest near the statue of Mahatma Gandhi in the Parliament House complex against Hegde’s remarks.

Gandhi had set the tone in the morning itself.

“The BJP operates on the basic idea that a lie can be used for political benefits. That’s the basic difference between the Congress and the BJP. Somehow, we might not do well, we might even lose but we will not give up the truth. We will defend the truth,” he said in an apparent reference to the party’s defeats in the recent assembly elections in Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh.

“The central idea of the Congress party is the truth. We accept the truth, we work with the truth and we fight for the truth,” he said after hoisting the Congress flag at the party headquarters in Delhi.

Gandhi took over the reigns of the grand old party that was founded on December 28, 1885, from his mother Sonia Gandhi.