March 24, 2023 07:52 pm | Updated March 25, 2023 08:39 am IST – Thiruvananthapuram
Congress Party workers taking out a protest march at Kalpetta in Wayanad district on Friday evening. Photo: Special Arrangement
The government and the Opposition have decried Wayanad Lok Sabha member Rahul Gandhi’s expulsion from Parliament scarcely a day after a court in Gujarat found the Congress leader guilty of defaming Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Congress workers took to the streets, particularly in Wayanad, to protest against the ban. The Congress-led United Democratic Front (UDF) announced it would organise a march to the Raj Bhavan here on March 27 to decry the Centre’s “fascist” attempts to drown Opposition voices.
Kerala Pradesh Congress Committee president K. Sudhakaran and Leader of the Opposition V.D. Satheesan will spearhead the demonstration. Congress MPs and MLAs will attend.
The UDF and the Communist Party of India (Marxist) [CPI(M)]-led Left Democratic Front (LDF) cast Mr. Gandhi’s “hasty” disqualification as MP without according the leader time to file an appeal in a higher court as patently “authoritarian and anti-democratic”.
Both alliances cast it as a move to silence dissenting voices in Parliament and to cover up the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) questionable relationship with some corporate business houses and its anti-poor policies.
Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan joined Leader of the Opposition V.D. Satheesan in condemning the debarment. Mr. Vijayan called it the latest episode in the Sangh Parivar’s relentless assault on “our democracy”.
“Free speech and dissent are at risk under the current disposition. If a prominent Opposition leader is targeted for his opinions, ordinary people would fear to exercise their democratic right,” he said.
Mr. Vijayan highlighted the CBI’s arrest of New Delhi’s Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia and the Centre’s “subversion” of constitutionally sanctioned federal law enforcement agencies to “target” Opposition politicians and provincial governments in non-Bharatiya Janata Party-ruled States.
“In New Delhi, mere posters against the Centre have triggered criminal charges and mass arrests. Democratic forces should rally to resist such fascist moves and save the democracy, India’s secular polity and the Constitution from the right-wing revanchist Sangh Parivar forces,” he said.
Mr. Satheesan said the expulsion would not deter Mr. Gandhi or the Congress from fighting to defend secularism and democracy. The Congress would continue to expose the shenanigans and fascism of the Modi government.
CPI(M) general secretary Sitaram Yechury tweeted: It’s condemnable that the BJP is now using the criminal defamation route to target Opposition leaders and disqualify them as done with @RahulGandhi now. This comes on top of the gross misuse of ED/CBI against the Opposition. Resist and defeat such authoritarian assaults”.
