Priyanka lambasts 
attacks on hubby, vows to fight back

As the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) steps up the attacks on Congress President Sonia Gandhi and her family in the campaign for the ongoing Lok Sabha elections in India, her daughter Priyanka Vadra on Tuesday hit back at those making allegations against her husband Robert Vadra and declared that she would not be deterred by such attempts and would fight back with greater determination.

Addressing a meeting in Rae Bareli in Uttar Pradesh, her mother’s constituency, Priyanka said she was pained by the kind of discourse taking place in the country currently. She said the elections should have been about development, about the needs of the people of the country, what political parties plan to do for them, about jobs for the youth and how the country would be taken forward. Instead of debates on such issues, she said the people were being misled by “meaningless and baseless allegations” against the Congress and her family.

“Lots of things are being said, harsh words are being used, my family is being maligned, my husband is being maligned,” she said.

“I am saddened, not because my family is being maligned, not because my husband is being maligned and the truth does not come out,” she said. “Not because every day I have to tell my children that the truth will emerge one day, because I have learnt from (former Prime Minister) Indira Gandhi that the truth will come out,” she said. “Your mind becomes stronger. No matter how much they try to push us down, we will come back stronger,” she said.

“The more they try to malign me, the harder I will fight back,” she declared. She said she was pained because such allegations served to take the focus away from development and such other crucial issues.

Priyanka said the elections were about preserving India’s pluralist democracy, its composite culture and about development.

“In these elections, vote for the country, for your children’s future, for the India of Buddha and Mahatma Gandhi, a country in which Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs and Christians live together,” she said.

Priyanka, who has been managing the campaign of Gandhi in Rae Bareli and her brother and Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi in Amethi, recalled the love and affection that the people of the region had showered on her family. “This country is known for its generosity, its great sons have been known for their generosity. My mother was not born in this country, but you made her one of your own. You know how well she has represented you in Parliament,” she said. She accused the opposition of making people and communities fight each other. “They talk about taking one community forward, about leaving the other behind,” she said.

— news@khaleejtimes.com

• India