Kharge’s “Your Friends” Jab After Rahul Calls Out the Ones Who Walked Away
The other day at the Congress office in Delhi, Rahul Gandhi sat down with about sixty young workers from Youth Congress, NSUI and Seva Dal over tea. Priyanka Gandhi was there too, and so was party president Mallikarjun Kharge. These kids had been out on the streets lately, protesting against the Election Commission chief. One boy even had a plaster on his leg. Rahul looked at him and said it looked like a medal. Then the talk turned to people who left the party. Rahul didn’t hold back. He said the Congress is left with only real lions now—babbar sher. The greedy ones and the cowards have already gone. Some ran after bungalows and security cover, others ran because they got scared of ED and CBI. He named two people straight out—Jyotiraditya Scindia and Ghulam Nabi Azad. Kharge didn’t let that hang in the air for long. With a straight face he said, “They were all your friends.” The room broke into laughter. Rahul looked a bit awkward and turned towards his sister. “Priyanka is sitting right here. She knows Scindia was never my friend.” He then told a story from his childhood. He once asked his grandmother Indira Gandhi who her best friend was. She said she didn’t have one. When the young Rahul pointed to a woman who used to visit the house a lot, Indira told him, “I may be her best friend, but she is not mine.” Rahul used that to make his point. In politics, he said, the person who looks like a friend often isn’t, and the one who looks like an enemy may not be either. “I’m a political person. Figuring out who my real friends are is not easy for others.” Everyone in the room knew the background. Scindia had been close to Rahul for years. They were seen together often. In 2020 he walked out, took a bunch of MLAs with him in Madhya Pradesh, and joined the BJP. Now he’s a minister. Azad, a senior face from Jammu and Kashmir, left in 2022, wrote a book criticising the party, and started his own outfit. Rahul also held up Kharge as an example. The man had come close to becoming chief minister of Karnataka twice but never compromised on ideology. That, Rahul told the young workers, is what matters. The meeting wasn’t just about the past. Rahul told them to keep protesting, find new ways to raise their voice, and even go back to Jantar Mantar even if the government has taken it off the approved list. He claimed the Modi government has only eight to ten months left. This whole exchange shows how the Congress is trying to turn the exits of big names into a story of strength. By calling those who left cowards, Rahul is telling the remaining workers that the ones who stayed are the real fighters. Kharge’s one-liner keeps it light and human instead of sounding bitter. Party people say the tea meeting was mainly to lift the spirits of workers who have been getting detained and beaten up in recent protests. Rahul’s message was simple—the struggle itself is the training. Scindia and Azad haven’t reacted to these latest remarks yet. Both have hit out at the Congress and Rahul before. Inside the party the episode is being seen as another clear line being drawn between those who stayed and those who left. Kharge’s “your friends” line, said with a smile, softens it while still making the point stick. For the young workers sitting there the takeaway was clear. The party may have lost some big names, but the ones who remain, according to Rahul, are ready to fight. And Kharge made sure nobody forgot that some of those names once sat at the same table. Sources: NDTV reporting based on people present at the informal meeting; public record of Scindia’s 2020 exit and Azad’s 2022 departure. @Rohit Manral
‘Open Emergency-Like Situation’ Across the Country, Says CJP; We Will Keep Protesting Till the CEC Goes
New Delhi: Just a few hours after they walked out of detention, the Cockroach Janta Party leaders stood at the Press Club of India on Sunday and spoke the way people actually speak when they’re angry and tired. Saurav Das looked at the reporters and said the whole country right now feels like an open emergency. The kind we last saw in 1975. “Delhi has been turned into a cantonment,” he said. Thirty to forty thousand security people everywhere. Fifty-seven metro stations shut. Rajdhani trains cancelled. Markets forced closed on a Sunday. Ordinary people made to suffer so that they start blaming the protestors instead of the government. He said the Modi government has put the state against its own citizens. They could have simply called a few of us for talks. Instead they locked the capital down. The CJP wants Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar to resign. They say the Special Intensive Revision of voter lists is full of problems and the right to vote itself is under threat. The Election Commission denies everything, of course. Das, Ashutosh Ranka and founder Abhijeet Dipke had been picked up the day before as soon as they landed in Delhi. On Sunday a magistrate let them go after they put up Rs 50,000 surety each and agreed not to “breach the peace” for one year. Das almost laughed when he talked about that condition. “They say we should not breach the peace for one year. The people who breached the peace are Narendra Modi, Amit Shah and Gyanesh Kumar.” Ranka was plain. “This protest will not stop till Kumar resigns.” He said Jantar Mantar is a designated protest site. Peaceful protest there cannot be called a breach of peace. “Protests will happen, not just in Delhi, but across the country,” Das added. Saturday had been heavy. Police say about 2,500 people were detained. Other numbers going around are closer to 7,000. Central Delhi sealed. Mobile networks cut in places. Force brought in from Kashmir, Bengal, Naxal areas. The CJP says phones of detained activists were taken without proper papers and they fear the phones have been compromised. Journalists covering the protests were also hassled, according to them. Opposition leaders are saying the same thing. Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge called it an undeclared emergency. He and Rahul Gandhi plan to meet the Chief Justice of India. Gandhi said the more they try to suppress Gen Z, the angrier the young people will get. Police keep saying everything was done by the book to keep order. The heavy deployment will stay because more protests are expected. The Supreme Court has already said no illegal detention of peaceful protestors and that metro and trains should run normally. The CJP started as a Gen Z response after a court remark about jobless youth and cockroaches. They are not a registered party. They just keep saying the same thing: free and fair elections cannot happen with this CEC. Kumar has to go. The SIR has to be fixed. At the press conference they made it clear. We did not sign any bond that stops us from coming back on the streets. The protest is on. It will not stop until the Chief Election Commissioner resigns. And right now, they say, the country is living through something that looks and feels exactly like an open emergency. Sources: Economic Times, News9live, BBC, New Indian Express, Indian Express, Hindustan Times, Free Press Journal, Deccan Chronicle, PTI. @Rohit Manral
Rahul Gandhi says Punjab govt is crushing people who dare to ask questions – demands Finance Minister’s resignation after Gulzar Singh’s death
Gulzar was a simple daily-wage man, around 47. His son got hooked on chitta – you know that deadly drug that’s everywhere in Punjab these days. The addiction was so bad they even sold their house. On 6th September, Finance Minister Harpal Singh Cheema came to their village for some public meeting. Gulzar stood up and asked the one question that was eating him inside: “Minister saab, why is chitta still being sold so openly? My son is ruined, why hasn’t the government stopped this?” That was it. Just that one question. According to his family, after the meeting some local people, including panchayat members, started pressuring him. They told him to apologise, to take his words back. The next day the poor man swallowed poison. They kept shifting him from one hospital to another – Sangrur, then Patiala, back again, private hospital, finally DMC Ludhiana. He died on the night of 7th September. In a video he made before dying, he clearly named the minister and a few local leaders, saying they pushed him to this point. Police have booked five people – the sarpanch and some others – under abetment of suicide and SC/ST Act because Gulzar was from the Dalit community. But the minister’s name is not in the FIR yet. An SIT has been formed. Even the National Commission for Scheduled Castes has asked the Punjab government for a full report. This morning Rahul Gandhi put out a strong post. He said a dangerous pattern is coming out in Punjab’s AAP government – if you question their failures, they reply with threats and torture. He wrote that Gulzar, a Dalit man who watched his own son get destroyed by drugs, only asked the Finance Minister why the government failed so badly in stopping the drug trade. For that simple question they tortured him, humiliated him, and pressured him so hard to apologise that he took poison. Then they moved him from hospital to hospital and he died without proper treatment. Rahul’s exact words were: “The government’s job is to answer to the people, not to crush those who ask questions.” He demanded that Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann immediately ask for Harpal Cheema’s resignation and order a proper independent investigation, and that the minister’s name should be put in the FIR. He also mentioned another young man, Mohanjeet Singh, who was allegedly tortured for protesting against the CM last week. Opposition is going full throttle. BJP wants both Mann and Cheema to resign and is talking about CBI probe. Akali Dal leaders are saying the dying declaration cannot be ignored. Congress leaders in Punjab are calling it the shameful face of the government. AAP side is calling it “vulture politics.” The minister says he listened to Gulzar properly and even asked police to act on the drug suppliers. Local panchayat people are denying any harassment. But the real issue remains. Punjab has been fighting this drug problem for years. Governments come and go, big campaigns are run, yet fathers still have to stand up in public meetings and ask the same painful question. And when one of them ends up dead after asking, it stops being just another news story. Rahul has framed it as crushing of those who question. You can agree or disagree with the politics, but the demand is simple – fair probe, justice for the family, and if the allegations are true, real accountability. Gulzar’s family is left with nothing but grief and the hope that someone will finally listen. And for the rest of Punjab, that same question is still hanging in the air – why hasn’t the drug trade been stopped? Sources: Times of India, Indian Express, NDTV, The Tribune, India Today, ANI, The Hindu. @Rohit Manral