New Delhi: The Congress on Sunday came out in defence of party president Sonia Gandhi’s son-in-law Robert Vadra, who found himself at the centre of a controversy over his spat with a reporter asking questions about his land deals. The ruling BJP chose to attack Mr Vadra for his “inappropriate behaviour.”
The Congress, which in the past has said that Mr Vadra was a private citizen, defended him, saying that “repeated hounding” of an individual is “not appropriate” and advised the media to avoid the “unpleasantness” of shooting questions at private functions, like what happened on Saturday.
“The Indian Consti-tution and our established ethos guarantee the right of privacy, personal space and liberty to all individuals, more so when a person is neither in public life nor holds any public office. It is clear that the entire episode is being propagated as a political age-nda for obvious reaso-ns, which cannot be considered either fair or proper,” AICC spokesperson Randeep Singh Surjewala said.
He said that repeated hounding of an individual on an issue that has been “conclusively rejected both by a constitutional body like the Election Commission of India as also High Courts and finally the Supreme Court of India is not appropriate.”
The Congress also reminded the BJP of PM Narendra Modi’s “shoddy treatment” of two journalists when they questioned him on the Gujarat riots when he was the state’s Chief Minister.
Mr Vadra on Saturday lost his cool and pushed aside the microphone of a reporter at a five-star hotel’s gym when he was quizzed about his controversial land deals in Haryana.
Meanwhile, BJP spokesperson Sambit Patra said it was Mr Vadra’s “sheer frustration” that caused his behaviour.
“Mr Vadra was the one who had called India a banana republic and we Indians as mango people but it is time that we make him realise that India is no more a banana republic which was ruled by the first family of the Congress,” he said.
Rubbishing the Congress’ defence, BJP leader Shahnawaz Hussain said Mr Vadra is not a private citizen, a term Congress general secretary Digvijay Singh used to shield him and chide the media for paying so much attention to a “non-event.” He said, “If Mr Vadra had been a private person then he would not have got the privileges in Haryana, neither would he have got privileges at airports.”
