Rahul Gandhi, the Leader of Opposition in Lok Sabha, triggered a row in the parliament on Monday when he alleged that Prime Minister Narendra Modi had dispatched External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar to the United States to secure an invitation for the swearing-in ceremony of President Donald Trump and claimed that the Indian Army had contradicted Modi’s claim about the situation in Ladakh.
“The Prime Minister has denied it and the Army has contradicted the Prime Minsiter, disagreed with the Prime Minister, that China is sitting on 4,000 square kilometre of our land — of our territory,” said Rahul, attracting an intervention from Union minister Kiren Rijiju.
Rahul was later asked by Speaker Om Birla to substantiate his claims.
On his part, Rijiju said that Rahul cannot invent facts on the “serious” of Ladakh that is related to India’s
Rahul appeared to be referring to Modi’s statement in 2020 after the Galwan Valley clashes that killed 20 Indian soldiers. At the time, Modi had said that neither anyone had come inside Indian territory nor any Indian post been occupied.
Rahul further said, “Our Chief of Army Staff has said that the Chinese are inside our territory. This is a fact. The reason China is inside our territory is important…The reason China is sitting inside this country is because ‘Make in India’ has failed. The reason China sitting inside this country is because India is refusing to produce and I’m worried that India is going to give up this revolution to the Chinese once again…If and when we fight a war with China, we will be fighting with Chinese electric motors, Chinese batteries and Chinese optics and we will be buying Chinese motors, Chinese optics and Chinese batteries.”
In the same speech, criticising the Modi government’s economic policy, Rahul said that had Indian policy been good, Modi would not have needed to send Jaishankar to the United States to secure an invitation for Trump’s Inauguration. It was a reference to Jaishankar’s visit to the United States during December 24-29 during which he met officials of both the outgoing Joe Biden administration and incoming Trump administration.
“When we talk to the United States, we would not send our foreign minister to invite our Prime Minister to his coronation…Because if we had a production system and if we were working on these technologies, the American President would come here and invite the Prime Minister,” said Rahul.
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