'Just because you are not bright…': BJP slams Rahul Gandhi over Cambridge speech

At a time when India is hosting the G20 Summit, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi's address at Cambridge university has ruffled quite a few feathers within the BJP. During a recent lecture the Wayanad MP had alleged that an attack has been unleashed on the basic structure of Indian democracy. The allegation has not gone down well, with BJP leaders lambasting Gandhi for ‘telling people bad things about India’.

"Just because you are not a bright kid and not a bright kid of your dynastic party doesn't mean India is not a bright spot," BJP spokesperson Sambit Patra said on Saturday.

Delivering a lecture at the Cambridge Judge Business School on Tuesday evening as a Visiting Fellow, Gandhi had asserted that Indian democracy was under attack. 

"Everybody knows and it’s in the news a lot that Indian democracy is under pressure and under attack…The institutional framework which is required for a democracy: Parliament, a free press, the judiciary and just the idea of mobilisation, these are all getting constrained. We are facing an attack on the basic structure of Indian democracy," he had said.

Also read: Need new thinking to promote democratic environment: Rahul Gandhi at Cambridge

Addressing a press conference in New Delhi, Patra also accused the Congress leader of attempting to dissuade investors at a time when the country was being perceived as a ‘bright spot’.

"While the whole world is using good words to describe India and encouraging it, its main opposition leader, on foreign soil is claiming that the country has been destroyed and democracy is no longer there while the judiciary and the media are in bad shape," he added. 

Others including Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma and Union Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad have also lambasted Gandhi's remarks. 

"First foreign agents target us! Then our own targets us on a foreign land! Rahul Gandhi's speech at Cambridge was nothing but a brazen attempt to denigrate our country on foreign soil in the guise of targeting PM Narendra Modi ji," Sarma tweeted.

Also read: ‘Officers told me to be careful...’: Rahul Gandhi on Pegasus issue

Gandhi had also claimed that Israeli spyware Pegasus was being used to spy on him. The lawmaker said that intelligence officers had warned him to be "careful" while speaking on the phone as his calls were being recorded.

"Why didn't you give your phone for investigation when Supreme Court's inquiry committee asked you to do so?" countered Patra. 

(With inputs from agencies)