In reaction to late former President Pranab Mukherjee’s daughter Sharmistha Mukherjee’s claims about Congress MP Rahul Gandhi, Leader of the Opposition in Maharashtra Legislative Assembly Vijay Wadettiwar said on Thursday that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is using someone like Sharmistha Mukherjee only to defame Rahul Gandhi.
“These people (BJP) always fear Rahul Gandhi. They could not defame him on their own. As per a strategy, they (BJP) are defaming Rahul using someone like Sharmistha,” Wadettiwar said speaking to ANI.
In an interview with a TV news channel, Sharmistha Mukherjee had recently claimed that her late father had told him once, sarcastically, that Rahul Gandhi could not differentiate between pm or am and he was not fit to be the Prime Minister.
Heaping praises on the former President, Vijay Wadettiwar said that the BJP has a hidden agenda and might have used Sharmistha to defame Rahul Gandhi.
“Pranab Mukherjee was a senior leader and Congress did justice with his abilities. Now, why did Sharmistha ji say this? BJP always has a hidden agenda to defame a person using a third person,” the Leader of Opposition said.
Speaking highly of Rahul Gandhi, Wadettiwar said, “Rahul Gandhi is a leader with an honest image. People all over the country knows about his hard work and his thoughts about the country.”
The Maharashtra Congress leader even speculated that Sharmistha Mukherjee might be choosing a different path for herself.
“Maybe Sharmistha is taking a different path. She may take that road but she should not defame our leader,” Wadettiwar said.
Speaking about her upcoming book on her late father, Sharmistha Mukherjee, in the interview said that Pranab Mukherjee was upset with Rahul Gandhi’s frequent absence from Parliament after the 2014 Lok Sabha polls.
She further said that the former President did not take Rahul Gandhi’s act of trashing an ordinance brought in by the then Congress government in 2013 on disqualification of convicted leaders from Parliament.