Congress leader Priyanka Gandhi on Friday said she had stopped children from shouting an abusive slogan against Prime Minister Narendra Modi and asked them to should good slogans instead, PTI reported. Gandhi’s statement came a day after the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights issued her a notice for allegedly involving children in her election campaign.
“The children were playing among themselves,” Gandhi told reporters in Uttar Pradesh’s Rae Bareli district. “When I got down to meet them, they raised some slogans. As soon as they raised wrong slogans, I stopped them and told them to raise good slogans instead.”
She said she had received the child rights body’s letter and added that the video of the incident was in the public domain.
In its notice to Gandhi, the child rights organisation asked her to submit her reply within three days, and cited an August 2014 Bombay High Court order banning children from being used in election campaigns. It has asked the Congress general secretary for eastern Uttar Pradesh to specify the names and addresses of the children, the places where they shouted the slogans and how they reached there.
On Tuesday, Union minister Smriti Irani retweeted a clip of the video. However, the video ended right before the Congress leader can be seen stopping the children from chanting the slogan.
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Fact check: Video in which kids abuse Modi as Priyanka Gandhi looks on has been maliciously clipped
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