Congress staged protest meetings in Dehradun and in all the district headquarters of the state on Thursday against the alleged attack on its state party headquarters by some BJP workers on Wednesday a little before the party MP Kumari Selja was to address a press conference on the festering Rafale aircraft deal.
In Dehradun, the Congress activists gathered at Rajiv Bhawan-the state party headquarters- and protested against the alleged vandalism staged by some BJP workers who barged into the state party office on Wednesday. Addressing the workers, the state Congress president Pritam Singh said that BJP would not be able to gag the voice of the Congress by engaging in goondaism. In a firm tone, he said that his party was prepared to countenance every attack by BJP by the Gandhian means. Daring the BJP, the administration and the police, Singh said that the combo might try to silence the voice of the Congress with all the might and main it had. Questioning the timing the BJP leaders and workers had chosen for the attack on Rajiv Bhawan when the AICC general secretary Kumari Selja was about to unmask the Centre on the Rafale deal to the media, Singh said that the intention behind the attack was clear-to scare the Congress leaders into silence. He on the occasion exhorted the Congress workers to be prepared to take to the roads and go to jail in the coming days while fighting against corruption and atrocities on the common people.
Addressing the gathering, Kedarnath MLA Manoj Rawat said that BJP and its leaders had no faith in democracy which was why the party was hell- bent on crushing the opposition.
Former PCC president Kishore Upadhyaya said that the whole country demands the Prime Minister Narendra Modi to reply to the questions raised by the Congress president Rahul Gandhi on the Rafale deal. “However, he has been maintaining a stony silence. Instead, he is going all-out to gag the opposition’s voice by unleashing his hoodlums,” he said. Former minister Hira Singh Bisht said that the attack on Rajiv Bhawan in Dehradun was a part of the attack being unleashed on the Congress elsewhere in the country. “The state government must explain as to how the attack occurred in the presence of the police,” he said. Another former minister Rajendra Bhandari said that the Congress workers were ready to take on the saffron ruffians. The state party vice- president Suryakant Dhasmana in his speech said that since the Congress abides by the principles laid down by Mahatma Gandhi every demonstration staged by Congress is peaceful. “However, the saffron vandals have proved that they derive strength from the killers of Mahatma Gandhi,” he said.
After the protest meeting was over the Congress activists led by the leaders marched to Astley Hall where they torched the BJP in its effigy as a mark of protest.
Similar protest meetings and effigy burning was reported from other parts of the state on the day.