‘Candidate Kaun Hai?’, ‘Vishguru Salvo’: When Cong's Jairam Ramesh’s Fresh Ammo Against BJP Backfired

Congress general secretary in charge of communications Jairam Ramesh seems to be in a tight spot when the claims that he made against the BJP government in a series of tweets over the last few days backfired and instead brought out Congress past to the foreground.

When Ramesh commented “candidate kaun hai? (Who is the candidate)” on a video where Prime Minister Narendra Modi is seen shaking hand with BJP vice-presidential candidate Jagdeep Dhankhar as he files his nomination on Monday, BJP MP from Jharkhand was quick to post a picture of Sonia Gandhi and Manmohan Singh flanked by other leaders, including Rahul Gandhi, during the UPDA rule, taking a jibe at Congress’ hypocrisy.

In another gaffe on July 17 when Ramesh tweeted about PM Modi not attending the all-party meeting ahead of the monsoon session of Parliament, Union Parliamentary Affairs Minister Pralhad Joshi said, “Congress’s Jairam Ramesh raised the issue that PM didn’t attend the meeting today. I want to tell him that before 2014, PM never used to attend all-party meet. How many times did Manmohan Singh ji attend the all-party meeting? (sic).”

In June 15 tweet, Ramesh criticised the Parliament order, dated July 14, asking members to not use precincts of the House for demonstrations, dharna, strike or fast “Vishguru’s latest salvo – D(h)arna Mana Hai! (sic)”. He was soon called out by a Twitter user that the same circular is being issued by Parliament since 2009 – the year when the UPA government was in power.

While this was not enough, Ramesh on July 14 slammed the government’s move to ban words such as “Jumlajeevi”, “Baal Buddhi”, “Covid spreader” in Parliament, saying “All words used by the Opposition to describe the reality of Modi Sarkar now to be considered ‘unparliamentary’. What next Vishguru?” On the same day, Lok Sabha speaker Om Birla clarified that “earlier a book of such unparliamentary words used to be released… to avoid wastage of papers, we have put it on Internet. No words have been banned, we have issued a compilation of the words that have been expunged”.

The monsoon session began on Monday saw Opposition parties demanding discussion on price rise and Agnipath scheme. M Venkaiah Naidu urged MPs to be “different and better” than they were in the last five years when 57% of House sittings were partly or fully disrupted. He said this is the last session in the 75th year of Independence and MPs should give their best performance to make it a memorable session.

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