Congress attacks BJP for 'photo' remark on Rahul Gandhi

Rahul Gandhi

New Delhi: The Congress on Wednesday slammed the BJP after it dubbed Congress leader Rahul Gandhi's visit to a Haryana Dalit family whose two children were burnt to death as "a photo opportunity".

Rahul Gandhi

No one indulges in photo opportunities more than Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Congress spokesman Abhishek Manu Singhvi told the media.

"When the Congress vice president visits the family and tries to extend a healing touch, to add insult to injury, the BJP calls it a photo opportunity," Singhvi said.

"Is it not an insult to those dead infants to call an extension of a hand of help or even sympathy at this hour of grief as a photo opportunity?"

He said it was the Bharatiya Janata Party which indulged in photo opportunities.

"Narendra Modi uses high-sounding but hollow acronyms - Yoga Day, Mann Ki Baat, Swachh Bharat Abhiyaan... Are these not photo opportunities?"

The Congress spokesman did not spare the BJP's allies as well as the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) either.

"The country is witnessing a conceited, but a very consistent and a concerted effort at fanning, creating, promoting inter-community and inter-caste tensions for political benefits.

"Faultlines that had withered or were waning are being deliberately activated not only by the ruling BJP but by also by its so-called Parivar constituents.

"Those faultlines are being accentuated and heightened and they are being done with a specific and most crude attempt to polarize both communities and castes," he said.

"And they are being done in conspiracy with allies like the Samajwadi party, the PDP, the Akali Dal... The AAP is complicit in this regard."

Asked why he was attacking the AAP, he said: "There is a lot of anguish and anger among the people of Delhi against the AAP. Even they indulge in a lot of high-sounding and hollow remarks."