One wonders at Congress’s new-found respect for the PM’s chair. It would’ve been believable but for the fact that on the first day of last year’s Winter Session, Congress leader Pramod Tiwari compared the prime minister with dictators and mass murderers, equating demonetisation with history’s heinous crimes.
“Kisi shabya desh ne yeh nahi kiya; jisne kiye hain unke naam itihas mein hai, pehla Gaddafi, doosra, Mussolini, Hitler & chautha hai PM Modi,” said Tiwari. Compared to this revilement, Sitaram Yechuri’s ‘Modi Antoinette’ jibe was child’s play.
It was even more amusing to see Rahul Gandhi jump into the fray to criticize Modi and defend the ‘honour’ of Manmohan Singh. Calling Modi’s comments “shameful”, the Congress vice-president said: “When a prime minister reduces himself to ridiculing his predecessor, years his senior, he hurts the dignity of the parliament and the nation.” Evidently the nation and the Parliament weren’t robbed of their ‘dignity’ when the Gandhi scion chose to tear apart an ordinance passed by Manmohan-led UPA and that too when the then PM was not in the country. It didn’t qualify as “insult to PM” either because no less than the Gandhi scion had done so.
And when one recalls Rahul Gandhi’s ‘khoon ki dalali’ (pimping or brokering) jibe at Modi over surgical strikes, Congress’s hypocritical notion of “honour” and “respect for PM’s chair” becomes apparent. It can alternate between being the aggressor and the victim in a manner of its own choosing. While it may denigrate the prime minister and call names it reserves the right to take the moral high ground when paid back in same coin.
