New Delhi: The Congress is extremely upset that its president Rahul Gandhi has been assigned a seat in the fourth row at Friday’s Republic Day celebrations at Rajpath in the heart of New Delhi. His predecessor and mother Sonia Gandhi was always seated in the front row.
Gandhi himself, his office said, has insisted that where he is seated is not important and that he must attend the function. But leaders of his party have described it as “deliberate humiliation” of the new Congress president.
The Congress alleges that the BJP-led government has also ensured that no visiting foreign dignitary meets Opposition parties. Congress leaders said that only leaders from countries where the party has maintained independent ties have met the party chief in recent years and that the government has not facilitated meetings of opposition leaders with world leaders visiting the country, a convention followed for years.
Ten leaders of members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations or ASEAN are the chief guests at the Republic Day parade, which will be presided over by President Ram Nath Kovind. PM Modi and his ministers, top leaders from political parties and senior officials will attend the event.
The ASEAN leaders arrived in Delhi on Wednesday and since then eight of them have held bilateral meetings with Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Two, Nazib Razak of Malaysia and Thongloun Sisoulith of Laos will hold one on one meeting on Friday with the PM, who also welcomed the guests at the plenary session of an India-ASEAN summit on Thursday evening.
None of the ASEAN leaders have met Rahul Gandhi or any other opposition leader and no such meeting is planned during their visit. The last visiting world leader who held a meeting with the then Congress chief Sonia Gandhi, was Bhutan King Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck in 2014. Rahul Gandhi took over as Congress chief last month.
In April 2012, when the Congress was in power at the Centre, the BJP had threatened to boycott Rashtrapati Bhavan functions because its leaders were not given place at the main table with the President during an At Home that he hosted.
