BJP inherited toolkit of British dictatorship: Kharge

New Delhi, June 13 (IANS) Congress President Mallikarjun Kharge on Tuesday slammed the BJP government at the Centre over former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey's claims, saying that the party's top leadership is embarrassing the country as "they have inherited the toolkit of dictatorship from the British".

Kharge said in a tweet in Hindi, "The political progeny of BJP-RSS, who stood against Indians and fought in favour of the British in the freedom movement, should not pretend to be nationalistic on the statement of the former CEO of Twitter."

He added: "The BJP is on top in embarrassing the country. From the slavery of the British, the BJP has only adopted the toolkit of dictatorship. Didn't the Modi government try to crush the farmers' movement? Prime Minister Modiji himself called the food donor farmers 'agitators'. Even UP CM (Yogi Adityanath) accused the farmers of taking foreign funding. BJP ministers and leaders called the farmers Maoists, terrorists and traitors. They tried to block their way by laying wire, cement walls, and nails on the road. Oppressed with sticks. Over 750 farmers lost their lives.

"Forget of giving them any kind of compensation, they did not even think of observing a minute's silence for them in the Parliament. 1.48 lakh farmers are still forced to fight the cases filed during the farmers' movement. If these have been done, it is not a big deal for the Modi government to threaten journalists and farmer leaders. We will continue to thwart the BJP's conspiracy to end democracy in the country."

Senior Congress leader P. Chidambaram also slammed the government over the revelations made by Dorsey and questioned "how the IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw runs his ministries?"

"I am appalled by the revelations about how Ashwini Vaishnaw runs his ministries. First, the Balasore tragedy. Obviously, the minister or his officers did not read the CAG reports No. 22 and 23 submitted in December 2022 or the letter of the Principal Chief Operations Manager in February 2023. The massive leak of data from the CoWin portal exposed the claim that personal data of millions of Indians are safe and protected," Chidambaram said in a tweet.

"The revelation that enormous pressure was put on Twitter to block or delete tweets or accounts and the threat to unleash the Income Tax department and arrest employees demolished the claim that the investigating agencies are independent. Why do we need unelected so-called 'experts' to run these crucial ministries and heap misery on the peopl," the Congress leader asked.

The remarks of the Congress leaders came in the wake of the comments made by Dorsey, which created a furore in India on Tuesday.

During an interview on YouTube, Dorsey, who stepped down from Twitter's board last year, was asked if he had faced any pressure from foreign governments.

He replied, "India for example... India is one of the countries which had many requests around farmers' protests, around particular journalists who were critical of the government, and it manifested in ways such as 'we will shut Twitter down in India' ... 'we would raid the homes of your employees', which they did; 'we will shut down your offices if you don't follow suit'. And this is India, a democratic country."

Farmers from several states staged protests against the three controversial farm laws on the borders of Delhi for over a year from November 2020. Prime Minister Narendra Modi later admitted the failure in convincing the farmers and appealed to them to call off their year-long protest. In the winter session of the Parliament, the three farm laws were withdrawn.

--INAS
aks/dan