Rahul Gandhi’s lecture on press freedom laughable: Hitesh Jain slams LoP’s presser on last day of campaign

New Delhi, Nov 18 (IANS) The last day of the campaign in the run-up to Maharashtra Assembly polls saw Congress’ scathing attack on the MahaYuti alliance while the latter confronted the former with a sharp counter.

Rahul Gandhi, in a press conference in Mumbai, hit out at the MahaYuti dispensation for shifting out key mega projects from Maharashtra to other states, to which the BJP launched a bitter diatribe, calling his statements a ‘masterclass in hypocrisy’.

Hitesh Jain, Vice-President of Mumbai BJP lashed out at the Congress MP for waving the Constitution copy at rallies and said, “It isn’t a prop for waving in press conferences but a principle that the party has tramped on for decades.”

“Rahul Gandhi, your press conference gave us a glimpse of the Congress playbook – authoritarian instincts, hypocrisy, and theatrics over substance. Maharashtra remembers your party’s failures and waving an empty Constitution won’t save you,” he said.

Raking up the dark chapter of Emergency under the Congress era, Jain said: “He waved an empty Constitution, yet belongs to a party that repeatedly subverted it – from the Emergency to the 42nd Amendment. His theatrics remind us of Congress’s dark past when democracy was strangled and the media was muzzled.”

He added that during Congress rule, Article 356 was abused 93 times to dismiss elected governments.

“The 42nd Amendment centralised power and undermined federalism. The Constitution isn’t a prop for waving in press conferences; it’s a principle Congress trampled on for decades,” he said.

Earlier, Rahul Gandhi addressing the media persons on the last day of the election campaign, spoke about the bag of goodies promised in its manifesto for all the sections of society and also termed the state election as the one for ‘jobs, inflation and justice for the poor.’

Flanked by many Central and state Congress leaders, Rahul said that people’s shattered dreams will weigh on people’s minds when they go to vote on Wednesday.

Hitesh Jain also hit out at the Maha Vikas Agahi (MVA) alliance for giving ‘false’ hope and ‘fake’ promises to people and shared a list of ‘failures’ in its tenure.

“In Maharashtra, Rahul has no answers for Congress’s failures, be it blocking infrastructure projects like the Mumbai Metro and Coastal Road or driving away industries with corruption and policy paralysis or misusing alliances for power,” he pointed out.

He also took the Congress MP to task over his labelling of journalists as ‘slaves of their owners’, at a previous public meeting.

“Congress is the original suppressor of media, jailing over 250 journalists during the Emergency and censoring newspapers like The Indian Express. Even today, Rahul believes in an obedient ‘His Master’s Voice’ list of journalists,” he remarked.

–IANS

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