UK PM Rishi Sunak defends PM Modi over controversial BBC series
London, Jan 19: Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has come out in defence of Prime Minister Narendra Modi after a controversial BBC documentary claimed that the British government was aware about the Indian leader having an alleged role in the 2002 Gujarat riots.
Sunak said he does not agree with the characterisation of Prime Minister Modi by Pakistani-origin Imran Hussain, an Opposition Labour Party MP, when he asked if the British premier agreed with claims in the BBC programme that some UK Foreign Office diplomats believed that "Modi was directly responsible".
During Prime Minister's Questions (PMQs) in the House of Commons on Wednesday, Hussain raised the claims made in the first part of India: The Modi Question' that UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) knew the "extent of Narendra Modi's involvement", then Gujarat chief minister, in the communal clashes that claimed hundreds of lives.
"The UK government's position on that is clear and long standing, and it has not changed," Sunak responded.
"Of course, we do not tolerate persecution anywhere, but I am not sure that I agree at all with the characterisation that the hon. gentleman has put forward," the British prime minister said.
The Indian government has, meanwhile, condemned the BBC Panorama programme, which has not been screened in India, as a propaganda piece with a questionable agenda behind it.
"We think that this is a propaganda piece, designed to push a particular discredited narrative. The bias, lack of objectivity and continuing colonial mindset is blatantly visible," MEA spokesperson Arindam Bagchi told reporters during a press briefing in New Delhi on Thursday when asked about the controversial series.
The first part of the two-part India: The Modi Question' programme, which aired on BBC Two on Tuesday, was categorised by the UK tax-payer funded broadcaster as "a look at the tensions between Indian PM Narendra Modi and India's Muslim minority, investigating claims about his role in 2002 riots that left over a thousand dead".
The second part of the series, scheduled to be aired next Tuesday, is pegged as a "look at the troubled relationship between Indian PM Narendra Modi's government and India's Muslim minority following his re-election in 2019".
"We strongly condemn the BBC's malicious documentary India: The Modi Question," said Insight UK, among several diaspora groups who have taken to social media to condemn the documentary.
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PM Modi, myself don't have 'wife issue': Rahul Gandhi
New Delhi (PTI): In a friendly banter, Leader of Opposition Rahul Gandhi on Friday said that Prime Minister Narendra Modi and he didn’t have "the wife issue", as the Congress MP emphasised that everyone has learnt from women in their lives.
Participating in a debate in the Lok Sabha on the three bills introduced for amendments to the women's quota law and setting up a delimitation commission, Gandhi said women are a driving force in the national imagination and national perspective.
"All of us in this room have been influenced, taught, and have learnt a lot from women in our lives – from mothers, sisters, wives," Gandhi said.
"Of course, the prime minister and myself don't have the wife issue, so we don't get that input, but we have our mothers and sisters," he said while referring to Parliamentary Affairs Minister Kiren Rijiju's light-hearted remark that he got a scolding at home as he did not pen a poem for his wife like Union minister Arjun Ram Meghwal did.
Gandhi also lauded his sister and Congress MP Priyanka Gandhi's speech in the Lok Sabha on Thursday.
"Yesterday, I was watching my sister achieve in five minutes what I have not been able to do in 20 years of my political career – make Amit Shah Ji smile," Gandhi said to peals of laughter.
