Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Friday again raised questions on the Chinese aggression across the Line of Actual Control.
“The Chinese have taken our land,” he said in a tweet. “When exactly is GOI planning to get it back? Or is that also going to be left to an ‘Act of God’?”
The “Act of God” was a reference to a comment made by Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on August 27, when she called the coronavirus pandemic an “Act of God” that led to the contraction of India’s economy and led to the shortfall in GST collection.
Gandhi’s comment came a day after External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar met his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi at a Shanghai Cooperation Organisation meeting in Moscow to discuss ways to defuse the tension that have escalated since the June 15 clash between India and China along the Line of Actual Control. At the Moscow meeting, they agreed that the border troops of both sides should “continue their dialogue, quickly disengage, maintain proper distance and ease tensions”.
Last week, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh had met his Chinese counterpart Wei Fenghe on the sidelines of another SCO meeting in Moscow. While that meeting ended with both sides stressing the need to peacefully “de-escalate” the situation, tensions flared once again after shots were fired at the Line of Actual Control on September 7.
Gandhi has repeatedly raised the Chinese incursion matter to attack the government over its failure to handle it.
On July 27, the Congress leader posted a video on Twitter, claiming that the Chinese have occupied Indian land and denying his comments were “anti-national”. On the other hand, he said, bringing the truth to the notice of the people is the patriotic thing to do.
On July 20, he had said that Prime Minister Narendra Modi came to power with the help of a “fabricated strongman image” but now that image of a leader with a “56-inch chest” was under attack from Beijing. China is “basically telling Modi that if you do not do what we say, we will destroy the idea of Modi as a strong leader,” Gandhi had said. The Congress leader had also described the Centre’s response to the crisis as “cowardly”.
Apart from the clash with the Chinese, Gandhi has also attacked the central government over the decline in Gross Domestic Product rate, unemployment and the coronavirus pandemic.
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