Cong, NCP All Praise for Rahul Gandhi’s Visit to JNU
Not only Congress but even NCP is all praise for Rahul Gandhi for his late night visit to Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) and his interaction with students on the campus.
DP Tripathi, NCP spokesman, quite enthusiastically reacted to the Congress scion’s visit, saying, “I want to congratulate him for going for an open and frank interaction with JNU students,”
A former JNU student’s union president, Tripathi said that he also wanted to congratulate JNU students for carrying on the “tradition of critical inquiry”.
During the visit, Rahul Gandhi was quizzed by the students on issues such as the hierarchical politics in India, his visits to Dalit houses, economic growth in India and education reforms.
Tripathi also said that the interaction has also shown that Gandhi was not interested in sycophancy.
As for Congress, it quickly played up Gandhi’s visit to JNU as an“excellent example of youth participation in politics”.
Congress spokesperson Abhishek Manu Singhvi described the visit as part of a “larger movement” of participative democracy.
The Congress also called Gandhi’s work as “revolutionary” and described the IYC organisational elections as being a “mini-general election”.
About Gandhi’s visit to JNU specifically, Singhvi said that Gandhi had addressed the newly constituted unit of NSUI at JNU. “A large number of students and not just members of NSUI participated in the programme. It’s a constructive approach and should be replicated across the country,” he said.
Linking the Congress leader’s visit to JNU with the work Gandhi had undertaken in the IYC, Singhvi said that his work represented “engagement, participation and transparency” in politics linked to the youth. The leader also detailed the number of youth who had joined the party in various states to showcase the success of the experiment.
Justifying Gandhi’s statement that political parties lacked democracy, Singhvi said, “Rahulji is correct. Organisational elections did not happen in any party.”
NCP’s Tripathi also agreed with Rahul. “None of our parties are truly democratic….We have to accept this fact and reform it,” he said, claiming that the NCP was “comparatively better” at internal democracy than the Congress.
Gandhi had also won praise from BJP leader Shatrughan Sinha recently, who said that given his work at the grassroots he had a “bright future”.
