Congress President Rahul Gandhi was slammed on social media on Wednesday after he appeared to be exploiting the Sterlite protests in Tamil Nadu to launch a malicious attack against PM Narendra Modi and the RSS.
The Tuticorin region of TamilNadu has been engulfed in violent protests by agitators who are opposing the proposed expansion of smelter Thoothukudi by Sterlite Copper – a subsidiary of Vedanta. This expansion plan would result in the plant’s total output potential to rise to 4.2 lakh tonnes per year.
The violent protests which have seen damage to public property have resulted in the deaths of at least nine individuals after the police resorted to firing to try and establish control.
Congress President Rahul Gandhi though looked like exploiting these protests to launch an attack on PM Modi and the RSS, blaming them for these deaths:
https://twitter.com/RahulGandhi/status/999152800721526784?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
This tweet in Tamil was translated by News18 as Rahul alleging that Tamilians were being “massacred” for not following RSS’ ideology. He also alleged that the bullets killing the protesters belonged to Modi and RSS:
https://twitter.com/CNNnews18/status/999159919914831872?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
Going by the statement, Rahul clearly looked like accusing PM Modi and the RSS, as well as its ideology for the deaths of the protesters.
Such an attack though came under intense scrutiny from various social media users, owing to its overt fallacy. It was pointed how law and order was a state subject, hence if indeed Rahul wanted to scrutinise the administrative action, he should have questioned the AIADMK led Tamil Nadu government and not PM Modi or RSS:
https://twitter.com/vikrantkumar/status/999187999253463043?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
https://twitter.com/KanchanGupta/status/999186079616937984?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
One user poked further holes in Rahul’s attack by pointing out BJP’s lack of political representation in the state of Tamil Nadu:
https://twitter.com/Brahamvakya/status/999187378748186624?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
As pointed out in a Swarajya report, Rahul’s moral high ground in this matter is ironic considering it was the Manmohan Singh led UPA government which had approved Sterlite’s expansion plan in 2007, against which the protesters are now battling.
Some might allege a further complicity of the Congress in this matter owing to its senior leader P Chidambaram being a non-executive director in Vedanta – Sterlite’s parent company before he joined the UPA-I government in 2004.