Delhi, 9 October (H.S.): The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Thursday demanded that Congress leader Rahul Gandhi issue a public apology for what it described as a “false and misleading campaign” during the ongoing Bihar Assembly elections.

Addressing a press conference at the party headquarters, BJP’s national spokesperson Pradeep Bhandari alleged that Rahul Gandhi had travelled across Bihar making “baseless accusations” of vote manipulation and had opposed the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) process of the electoral rolls.

“We had said earlier that Rahul Gandhi opposed the SIR process because he seeks to protect infiltrators,” Bhandari stated.

He noted that on October 8, the Bihar Election Commission released the final electoral list, which showed that not a single worker or booth-level agent from the Congress or Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) had filed an appeal against it.

“This zero-appeal situation proves that none of them found any discrepancies in the SIR process. It also exposes the fact that the issue Rahul Gandhi tried to manufacture during the Bihar elections had no ground reality whatsoever,” Bhandari said.

He added that even the RJD and Congress’s Bihar unit did not share confidence in the claims made by Rahul Gandhi.

“Rahul Gandhi’s propaganda in Bihar has been completely discredited. He should apologise publicly to the people of Bihar,” he demanded.

On a separate question regarding the 26/11 Mumbai terror attacks, Bhandari said that the Indian armed forces were fully prepared to retaliate against Pakistan but were restrained from doing so. He questioned former Home Minister P. Chidambaram on who within the UPA government had stopped the military response after the terror strike.

“Even Sonia Gandhi must respond,” Bhandari added, “because at that time she wielded more power than the Prime Minister. The Congress has repeatedly placed political interests above national interests.”

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Hindusthan Samachar / Jun Sarkar