Former Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Omar Abdullah on Friday criticised Speaker Sumitra Mahajan for commenting on Priyanka Gandhi Vadra’s induction into politics. Abdullah asked the Speaker to respect her office.
Vadra was appointed a general secretary of the party in Uttar Pradesh on Wednesday, months ahead of the Lok Sabha elections. The region includes Gorakhpur, from where Adityanath was elected as a Lok Sabha MP five times.
“Ma’am, you are the Speaker of the Lok Sabha,” Abdullah tweeted. “Can you save the cheap shots for when you no longer occupy that high office?”
On Thursday, Mahajan had told reporters in Indore that Congress President Rahul Gandhi was incapable of working alone, PTI reported. “Priyanka is a good woman. But her appointment also shows Rahul has understood that he cannot do politics alone, so he asked his sister Priyanka to help him,” Mahajan was quoted as saying.
“I don’t want to get into the family politics of the Congress, it’s their own matter,” she had added. “But I would definitely say that a person, who has leadership capabilities, should be given an opportunity to come forward.”
The Congress had also criticised Mahajan’s comments. “Mahajan should only focus on the BJP’s internal matters,” Congress leader Manish Tewari was quoted as saying by IANS. “So far as Congress is concerned, we are doing well without her advice and will continue to do so.”
Meanwhile, actor and Bharatiya Janata Party MP Paresh Rawal also criticised Vadra’s induction into the Opposition party’s All India Congress Committee. “They [Congress] say they have played their trump card.” Rawal tweeted. “Were they playing with a joker all this while?” His comments are an apparent reference to Gandhi’s role as Congress chief.
Vadra’s induction received mixed reactions from politicians. Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Adityanath on Friday said Vadra’s entry into politics will not improve the Congress party’s prospects in the upcoming Lok Sabha elections. “Zero plus zero results in zero,” Adityanath had told reporters in Noida.
Other BJP leaders like Sushil Modi and Vinod Narayan Jha also criticised Vadra’s entry into politics. Modi on Thursday described Robert Vadra, Priyanka Gandhi Vadra’s husband, who is being investigated by several government agencies for allegedly dubious land deals, as a “tainted life partner”, while Jha had said Vadra had a “beautiful face, but holds no political achievement.
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