Panaji: Union minister of state Rajeev Chandrasekhar on Wednesday lashed out at Rahul Gandhi for `exploiting’ the death of a young soldier for politics, and said the Congress leader had not served the country ‘in any capacity’.
He was reacting to Gandhi’s comments following the death of Agniveer Gawate Akshay Laxman who died in the line of duty in Siachen on October 22.
“I do not want to comment on Rahul Gandhi per se, except that he is a politician who fishes in troubled waters. He is a politician who has no shame or embarrassment even on the death of a young man who signed up as Agniveer. Even that death he will try and politically exploit,” said the BJP leader, talking to reporters here.
Rahul Gandhi is a man ‘who never worked even for a day in his life and has never served the country in any capacity except trying to bring the country down,’ Chandrasekhar added.
To use the death of a young soldier for politics is shameful and ‘plummeting to a new low even for a politician of Rahul’s standards,” he said.
Gandhi had on Sunday condoled Gavate’s death in a post on X, and called Agniveer a scheme devised to ‘insult’ India’s bravehearts, claiming that no pension or other benefits are given to the families of Agniveers after their martyrdom – a charge countered by the Bharatiya Janata Party.
When asked about his own recent tweet on the Indo-China war of 1962, Chandrasekhar said 1962 was a very low moment in the country’s history when thousands of soldiers had to die ‘after running out of bullets’ because of the political leadership’s ‘delusional’ approach towards China.
“Then Union defence minister V K Krishna Menon harboured some misguided love for China and refused to modernize the armed forces. Thousands of armed forces men became cannon fodder for that type of politics,” he claimed.
‘Some political leaders’ believe that Indians have a short memory and have forgotten what happened 50-60 years ago, the minister said, adding that it was important to assert that ‘we haven’t forgotten what your predecessor took India down, and how much India had to suffer.”
(Published 25 October 2023, 17:17 IST)