Taking on Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi, Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi said Gujarat government was involved in 2002 riots.
Speaking to an English news channel on Monday, Rahul defended the Congress government for 1984 riots and said, “Gujarat government was involved in 2002 riots while Congress government tried to stop 1984 riots.”
At the same time, he said that, “Some Congress men were probably involved in 1984 riots, legal process is on.”
To questions whether he would apologise for the 1984 riots and whether he felt that there was no need for it, Gandhi said, “First of all, I wasn’t involved in the riots at all. It wasn’t that I was a part of it.”
While on the topic of taking reins of the Congress party in the upcoming General Elections, Rahul said, “I am the vice president of the party and will take full responsibility if we (Congress) lose the elections.”
When asked about the criticism heaped on him by BJP leader Subramanian Swamy, Rahul said, “He (Swamy) has been attacking my family for 40 years. Let him take the legal process and solve it.”
While on personal criticism the Congress leader said, ” I respond by understanding why I am being attacked. Beat me to death, but I will keep asking questions that are relevant to the system.”
“It does not matter. Keep throwing stones at us. I am being attacked because I am doing things dangerous to the system,” he added.
Further while answering to a question that if not ‘Gandhi’ had he joined politics, Rahul said, “Unfairness makes my blood boil. That’s at the heart of my politics.”
When asked if he agreed with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s view that Modi presided over the “mass massacre” of innocents on the streets of Ahmedabad, Gandhi said, “what the Prime Minister is saying is the fact. Gujarat happened and people died.”
Asked if he was avoiding a direct face-off with Modi by not becoming the Prime Ministerial candidate of the Congress, the Congress Vice President said, “to understand that question, you have to understand a little bit, who Rahul Gandhi is and you get an answer to the question to what Rahul Gandhi is scared of and not scared of.”
To a question as to what was his view of BJP’s Prime Ministerial candidate, he said, “I think, we will defeat the BJP in the next elections….I will win the election. I am reasonably confident.”
—-PTI