NEW DELHI:
Congress president Rahul Gandhi on Thursday continued to pile the pressure on the BJP over the
Doklam issue, saying that external affairs minister
Sushma Swaraj "has buckled and prostrated herself in front of Chinese power".
"Amazing how a lady like Sushma ji has buckled and prostrated herself in front of Chinese power. Absolute subservience to the leader means our brave jawan has been betrayed on the border," tweeted Rahul on Thursday.
The Congress president's latest salvo comes a day after Swaraj, in the
Lok Sabha, said that the status quo in Doklam - that is, no renewed Chinese incursion - "hasn't change even an iota". The issue of last year's Chinese border intrusion at the border site in Sikkim was and continues to remain solved through "diplomatic maturity without losing any ground", said the minister.
Doklam last year witnessed a 73-day stand-off between the Indian and the Chinese armies, after the former stopped the latter from building a road in the disputed tri-junction of India, Bhutan and China.
Last month too, Rahul raked the government and Prime Minister Narendra Modi over the coals for what he said is ceding ground to China: "He (Modi) hops on a swing with the Chinese President on the banks of the Godavari even as the latter sends Chinese soldiers into Indian territory," said Rahul in the Lok Sabha.
Modi's "no agenda visit" to Wuhan in April, the Congress president said, was an eyewash.
"The PM goes to China saying there's 'no agenda' and tells the Chinese President 'we won't talk about Doklam'. This wasn't a 'no agenda' meeting it was a Chinese agenda meeting," said Rahul.
Swaraj yesterday said the Lok Sabha that the main objective of the informal summit between Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping at Wuhan was to ensure mutual comfort, mutual understanding and mutual trust between the two leaders and all the three objectives have been achieved.
Late last month, media reports quotes US sources as saying China had resumed activity in the Doklam region. A top US official, Alice G Wells, who is Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asia, told a Congressional committee during a hearing that China has resumed its activities to build infrastructure in the Doklam area, bordering India and Bhutan, with neither of the two South Asian countries having taken any steps to counter Beijing.
India, of course, refuted these reports and said the US officials'comments has been taken out of context.
