Cong steps in to defend Rahul's Babri remark

The Congress today termed Amethi MP Rahul Gandhi's remarks on the Babri Masjid demolition as an "emotion reaction", meant to reiterate Nehru-Gandhi family's commitment to secularism.

On a campaign trail in UP, the young MP had said that the Babri mosque would not have been demolished had the Gandhi family been in power at that time.

Faced with probing questions about the remarks, which unwittingly put the then Narasimha Rao government in the dock, Congress spokesperson Abhishek Singhvi today went to the extent of calling the media queries as "perverse".

As spin doctors of the Congress were at pains to convince that the remarks were not meant to criticise the Narasimha Rao government, the young Gandhi stuck to his stand.

"Opponents may say whatever they want. I have said only what my father had said," he told reporters in a Moradabad village at the end of his three-day roadshow ahead of the Assembly elections in UP.

BJP Parliamentary Party spokesperson (Rajya Sabha) Sushma Swaraj said Rahul Gandhi's statement showed his "feudal" attitude that nobody but the Gandhi family was fit to rule the country.

"What is astounding is that one would expect him to run down prime ministers of the Opposition parties, but in this case, he has criticised his own party's member who was the prime minister at that time," she said.