- विज्ञापन -
Washington: Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha, Rahul Gandhi came out heavily against the Bharatiya Janata Party-led Centre over the border standoff with China and said that Prime Minister Narendra Modi has not handled the situation well. The Congress leader was speaking at an interaction with media at the National Press Club in Washington DC on Tuesday (local time).
“We’ve got Chinese troops occupying land the size of Delhi in Ladakh, and I think that’s a disaster. The media doesn’t like to write about it. How would America react if a neighbour occupied 4,000 square kilometers of its territory? Would any president be able to get away with saying he’s handled that well? So, I don’t think Mr Modi has handled China well at all. I see no reason why Chinese troops should be sitting in our territory,” Rahul Gandhi said.
Notably, in 2020, the Indian and Chinese troops clashed at Galwan, the same year the pandemic started. Since May 2020, when the Chinese troops tried to aggressively change the status quo on LAC in eastern Ladakh, both sides have been deployed in forward positions near Patrolling Point 15, which emerged as a friction point in the wake of the Galwan clash. Over 50,000 Indian soldiers have been stationed since 2020 at forward posts along the LAC, with advanced weapons to prevent any attempts to change the status quo unilaterally on the LAC.
Terming the Chinese vision of production as “non-democratic”, the Raebareli MP stressed on the idea of US and India placing a production vision in a democratic and free society.
“We don’t want to do it like the Chinese are doing it. We don’t want to do it in an environment which is non-democratic, which is not liberal. So the real question for the 21st century, the Chinese have placed a production vision on the table. It’s a non-democratic production vision. Can the United States and India answer that by placing a vision for production in a democratic free society? And I think that’s where a lot of answers lie,” he said.
Rahul, also opened on his new role and responsibilities as the Leader of Opposition, and said there is an ideological war taking place between the INDIA bloc and the BJP-RSS. He further vowed that the Opposition wants to ‘defend’ India’s institutions and provide a broader vision for the country.
Rahul Gandhi is on a three-day visit to the United States. During this, he has interacted with Indian diaspora besides students and faculty at universities and also met US lawmakers. This is Rahul Gandhi first visit to the US after he became Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha.
