New Delhi: The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Friday rejected former Congress president Rahul Gandhi's charge that China has encroached on Indian territory as "baseless and absurd" and it asserted that the grand old party that has committed "a historic, unpardonable crime" in dealings with Beijing.
Addressing reporters in the national capital, BJP spokesperson Sudhanshu Trivedi quoted from selected works of first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru to say that his government had sent over 3,500 tonnes of rice in 1952 for the consumption of the Chinese Army which was "starving". He also asked Congress to release its reported agreement with the Chinese Communist Party when the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) was in power.
Sudhanshu Trivedi alleged that the decision to send rice for the Chinese Army when India's relations with China had started getting strained was not a mistake but a "historic and unpardonable" crime.
Rahul Gandhi has a habit of making baseless and absurd comments about China, Sudhanshu Trivedi said, adding that the former Congress president makes remarks on India, its people and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) in a similar vein.
According to the BJP spokesperson, during the Doklam crisis, Rahul Gandhi had met the Chinese ambassador. The BJP leader asserted the government under Prime Minister Narendra Modi has notched up unprecedented success in its handling of India's military, diplomatic and economic affairs.
The Congress has always tried to weaken the country when in the Opposition, Trivedi said and asked the party to learn from the BJP which supported the then governments during crises involving neighbours be it Pakistan or China.
While the Congress government refused to punish Pakistan for its support of terrorism as it thought that this would harm peace talks, Prime Minister Narendra Modi's policy is that terror and talks cannot go together. There is an atmosphere of peace and security while terror blasts routinely happened under the UPA, the BJP spokesperson added.
Rahul Gandhi at a public rally in Kargil said that every individual in Ladakh knows that China has "taken away our land" and claimed that Prime Minister Narendra Modi's assertion that not an inch of land was taken away was absolutely false.
Meanwhile, on Rahul Gandhi's criticism of the RSS, the BJP spokesperson said Jawaharlal Nehru had praised the Hindutva organisation's support to the government during the war with China in 1962 and had invited it to attend the Republic Day parade in 1963. "Rahul Gandhi should decide if he is right or Nehru was," Trivedi signed off. (With PTI inputs)
