New Delhi: The BJP slammed the Congress on Tuesday over Sonia Gandhi’s article on Israel’s military campaign in Gaza and Priyanka Gandhi Vadra’s “refusal” to acknowledge the Pahalgam terror attack victims as Hindus during a debate in the Lok Sabha, calling these the opposition party’s “desperate attempt” to “pander” to the Muslim vote bank.
Participating in a debate in the Lok Sabha on Operation Sindoor, Priyanka Gandhi launched a blistering attack on the BJP-led Centre over the “lapses” that led to the April 22 terror strike in Jammu and Kashmir’s Pahalgam and read out the names of the 25 Indians killed in the attack, asserting that she is doing this so that every member of the House realises that “they too were human beings like us, not pawns in some political game”.
As the Congress MP read out the first name, the treasury benches shouted: “Hindu”, to which she replied “Bharatiya” (Indian).
Reacting sharply, BJP’s IT department head Amit Malviya said in a post on X: “The Congress party’s shocking refusal to acknowledge that the victims of the Pahalgam terror attack were targeted for being Hindus shows exactly why the party remains disconnected from the sentiments of this nation and why it has no future in Indian politics.”
“On the very day when India debates Operation Sindoor, Sonia Gandhi chooses to write an emotional op-ed for Muslims in Gaza, a conflict that has nothing to do with India.
“This isn’t compassion. This is naked appeasement — a desperate attempt to pander to the Muslim votebank, even at the cost of ignoring the pain of Hindus back home,” Malviya charged, adding that this “double standard” is not lost on the people of India.
“There is not just one Pappu in Congress,” the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader said in a another post on the microblogging platform.
Asserting that Israel’s military campaign in Gaza amounts to “genocide”, Congress parliamentary party chairperson Sonia Gandhi slammed the Narendra Modi government on Tuesday for being a “mute spectator to this affront to humanity” and said this was a “cowardly betrayal of our constitutional values”.
She also said Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s “shameful silence” in the face of Israel’s relentless and devastating assault on the people of Gaza is “deeply disappointing” as well as the height of “moral cowardice”.
In an article published in Hindi daily “Dainik Jagran”, the former Congress chief urged the prime minister to speak out “clearly, boldly and forthrightly” on behalf of the legacy that India has long represented.
She said nothing can justify the barbaric attacks launched by Hamas militants on innocent men, women and children in Israel on October 7, 2023 or its continued holding of Israeli hostages thereafter.
She said these must be condemned repeatedly and unreservedly.
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