"Every time political analysts and polls indicate that it is time to take Rahul Gandhi seriously, he trots off on a foreign visit and says enough stupid things to prove them wrong," wrote Tavleen Singh in her weekly Sunday column for 'The Indian Express'.
"Of the stupid things he said on this visit, his first foreign trip as Leader of the Opposition, the stupidest was that the Lok Sabha elections were rigged. Why do I consider this the stupidest of the things he said on his trip in the United States?
Simply because you do not need to be politically literate to know that if Narendra Modi had rigged the elections, he would have at least ensured that he got a full majority."
"This simple piece of deduction appears to have escaped the notice of the Leader of the Opposition. So, speaking at Georgetown University he said, “In a fair election, I do not think the BJP would have come anywhere near 240 seats…I don’t view it as a fair election at all. It was rather a controlled election.” In the same breath (interview), it stunned me to hear him say that the Election Commission had not played fair and had done what Modi wanted," she writes.
"This, from a man whose mother ensured that a Chief Election Commissioner was nominated to the Rajya Sabha as soon as he retired and made a minister in the government she controlled.
This, from a man whose family presided over rigged elections in the Kashmir Valley for decades.
It is time for some history lessons for the man who, a recent poll reveals, is the people’s choice for prime minister after Modi," she notes.
"The second stupidest thing that Rahul Gandhi said on this visit was that Sikhs in India are no longer able to wear turbans or a ‘kada’. The words were barely out of his mouth when a Canadian Khalistani leader went loudly and visibly public with a statement that basically said, ‘we told you so’.
What is it about foreign climes that make the heir to our most storied political Dynasty nearly always spout nonsense when on foreign soil? Remember that on an earlier foreign excursion Rahul Gandhi declared that democracy had ceased to exist in India," pointed out Tavleen, who has often taken anti-Modi stance in her writings.
"What annoys me deeply about this kind of reckless ranting is that India desperately needs a strong Opposition so that there are guardrails that prevent the delusional overconfidence Modi has exhibited often in the past ten years," argues Tavleen Singh.
"The Prime Minister’s autocratic style of governance and the offensive arrogance of some of his ministers have unsettled even Modi’s most ardent supporters," she maintains.
"When he failed to get the BJP a full majority this time, you could almost hear a collective sigh of relief across the length and breadth of our ancient land. But this does not mean that Indian voters would have preferred to replace Modi with Rahul."
He would do well to remember this. It might persuade him to stop behaving as if he has all the answers.
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