After Union Minister Giriaj Singh claimed that Rahul Gandhi was ‘inauspicious’ for the Opposition bloc–INDIA, Congress leader and Kerala MP K Suresh on Wednesday said the former is in the habit of making ‘baseless’ allegations against his party and its leaders.
Congress leader said, “Giriraj Singh is an outspoken man. He always makes baseless allegations against the Congress and its leaders. We don’t mind what he says.”
Weighing in on the Congress’s Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra earlier, Giriraj said Rahul was turning out to be inauspicious for the INDIA bloc as the alliance seems to come apart wherever he goes.”Rahul Gandhi has proved to be inauspicious for the INDI-alliance. The alliance breaks off wherever he goes. We saw a rerun of what happened in West Bengal (Mamata Banerjee ruling out an alliance with Congress in Bengal) in neighbouring Bihar. Unless he bows to the dictates of (Samajwadi Party chief) Akhilesh Yadav, we could see more of the same thing in Uttar Pradesh. Rahul Gandhi should first do ‘Nyay’ (justice) to his own party,” Giriraj Singh told ANI in Bihar’s Patna.
On West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee’s statements on INDIA and seat-sharing for Bengal, Congress MP Suresh said, “The Bengal is a separate issue. Our party leaders will respond to whatever Mamata Banerjee says in Bengal.”
Earlier, the TMC supremo ruled out a seat-sharing deal with the Congress in Bengal, saying her party was quite capable of contesting all Lok Sabha seats in the state on its own steam and defeating the BJP.
Speaking at a public event in West Bengal on Monday, TMC leader Abhishek Banerjee, blamed the grand old party for the breakdown in alliance talks, saying while the basic norm of an alliance is for the partners to finalise a seat-sharing deal at the earliest, the Congress had been dragging its feet in the matter for months.
“When you are in an alliance with someone, the first thing you do is finalise the seat-sharing deal. We had been asking them about the seat-sharing arrangement since June. Seven months passed and they did nothing. At our (INDIA’s) last meeting in Delhi, Mamata Banerjee even set a deadline of December 31 (for the Congress to finalise its seat-sharing arrangement with the TMC in Bengal). We’re in the last week of January now, and they still haven’t done anything,” Abhishek said. (ANI)