Cong's 52 MPs will fight BJP every single inch, won't allow walkover: Rahul Gandhi
New Delhi, Jun 1: Congress President Rahul Gandhi on Saturday said that the party's newly-elected 52 members in Parliament will fight every inch of the way like "a pride of brave-hearted lions" to protect the Constitution and the country's institutions and there will be no walkover for the BJP.
Addressing the meeting of the Congress Parliamentary Party in the central hall of Parliament, Gandhi cautioned the lawmakers that it will "be like the British period, when not a single institution supported the Congress party" and asserted "yet we fought and won and we are going to do it again".
"We are 52 members and I guarantee you, it does not matter what institutions are standing against these 52 members. It does not matter who is standing against these 52 members. These 52 members are going to fight the BJP every single inch, without giving this much and that applies to the members from Rajya Sabha as well," he told the MPs, adding the Congress party will fearlessly do its duty as the leading opposition party in Parliament and outside.
Gandhi's pep talk to the Congress lawmakers comes as it struggles to come to terms with its second successive crushing defeat in the Lok Sabha elections and is facing a leadership crisis after his decision to quit as party president.
The MPs at the meeting unanimously elected Sonia Gandhi as leader of the Congress Parliamentary Party and she has been authorised to decide the leaders in Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha.
"The Congress Party may have just 52 Lok Sabha members, but we will work together like a pride of brave hearted lions to protect our Constitution and institutions and to fearlessly do our duty as the leading Opposition party. The BJP will have no walkover in Parliament," Gandhi later said on Twitter.
Stressing that the Congress will rejuvenate, he lauded each of the MPs who have won this election and said they would go down in history as the ones who not just fought against a political party but also against every institution.
"You fought a very good election, obviously, because the people who won the Lok Sabha this time need to understand exactly what they fought. You are probably the first people in this country's independent history, who have fought an election not against a political party but against every single institution in this country.
"There is not one institution that did not fight you and tried to stop you from coming into Lok Sabha and you fought every single one of those institutions and you forced your way into the Lok Sabha. And that is something you should be extremely proud of," he said.
Gandhi told the MPs that they have to understand that they are fighting for the Constitution of the country and the right of every single individual, regardless of the skin colour, religion, gender or state.
"Who is fighting against you, you have to understand that also. Hatred, cowardice and anger are fighting against you. Lack of confidence, lack of self-belief is fighting against you. The people who are opposing us in Parliament House, they use hatred, they use anger to fight us.
"Throughout the election, there is only one way to fight hatred and anger. There is no other way and that is the love and the affection and the compassion of the Congress Party.
"That is why the BJP sits and says that we want 'Congress-mukt Bharat' because without the Congress they have a free run and no one to counter them. There is no opposition against the BJP other than the love and compassion, the affection of the Congress Party. And that is what you have to understand," he told the new members.
He asked them to be more aggressive and said they "may have to shout a little more, as they will get less time in Parliament like the last time".
"Last time, if the Speaker used to give us five minutes, this time it may be two minutes, but in those two minutes, we will put forth what the Congress Party believes, we will put forth our defence of the Constitution," he said.
Gandhi also said it would have been better if some of the old faces would have won.
He said there were 5-10 people in the last Lok Sabha who gave tremendous support, but lamented that they did not win this time. "But they are ideologically with us even though they are standing outside the House. For me, they are standing with us inside the Lok Sabha."
Gandhi also thanked all the Congress workers "who fought for the idea of India and defended it" and said "it is an opportunity for us to introspect, to look inwards, to try and see as to what went wrong, to try to rejuvenate ourselves."
"I have no doubt that the Congress Party is going to rejuvenate. I have to thank all of you, especially the seniors who are here. You have given a tremendous service in fighting for the Constitution and now you are fighting every single institution."
"There is no institution that is going to support you in this country, not one is going to support you. It is like during the British period, when not a single institution supported the Congress Party yet we fought and won and we are going to do it again," he told the MPs.
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Death toll from Afghan quake rises, including 8 members of refugee family returned from Iran
Ittefaq (Afghanistan) (AP): For several minutes after the earthquake struck, he could hear their screams. Then there was silence.
Mohibullah Niazi, a neighbour who helped in the rescue efforts, said Saturday that the eight people killed on the outskirts of Kabul after a 5.8 magnitude earthquake struck northern Afghanistan the previous night were a refugee family recently returned from neighbouring Iran.
There was only one survivor: a boy of around 3 years old, who was injured and has been hospitalised in Kabul.
Afghanistan's deputy government spokesman Hamdullah Fitrat on Saturday increased the overall death toll from the quake to 12, with another four people injured.
Fitrat said five homes were destroyed and another 33 significantly damaged, affecting 40 families in the provinces of Kabul, Panjshir, Logar, Nangarhar, Laghman and Nuristan.
The Afghanistan Disaster Management Authority put the overall death toll at nine. The reason for the discrepancy was not immediately clear.
The family near Kabul was among the millions of Afghan refugees who have recently returned from Iran and Pakistan, after both countries launched crackdowns in 2023 on foreigners — particularly Afghans — living in their countries.
They had arrived 15 days ago and were living in a tent on land next to Niazi's home. The family head, Najibullah, who was about 50 years old, “had no other shelter", Niazi said. “He was a very poor person.”
We tried our best
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The family had set their tent up next to a wall separating the plot of land from Niazi's home, which stood on higher ground, in the village of Ittefaq on the eastern outskirts of the Afghan capital.
Heavy rains over the past several days, which have led to deadly floods in many parts of Afghanistan, had left the ground sodden and soft. When the earthquake struck, the wall collapsed on the family.
“My daughter shouted to me that a wall had fallen on them. The whole family ran, but there were so many big rocks,” Niazi recounted Saturday as he stood at the scene. “We tried our best.”
On Saturday morning, piles of bricks and mud were all that were left, along with blankets, cooking utensils and other personal belongings salvaged from the rubble and set into a pile.
“For about three minutes, I could hear the voices of these people,” Niazi said. “But we couldn't do anything. There were two or three of us, but this was not the work of three people.”
Neighbours soon rushed to help, digging through the mud and rubble with spades and their hands. They alerted the local Taliban police checkpoint, which sent rescuers and ambulances.
The young boy, Aarash, was pulled out alive but injured, and rushed to the hospital. Health Ministry spokesperson Sharafat Zaman, who visited the boy Saturday, said he was being treated for a severe head injury.
For the rest of the family — the father and mother, four daughters aged between 12 and 23, and two sons — it was too late. The rescuers could only recover their bodies.
Niazi said he had hosted the family in his own home one night. On Friday, just half an hour before the earthquake struck, he had renewed the offer, telling the family they could spend the night in his own guest room to shelter from the cold and rain. “But they did not come with me,” he said.
A string of deadly quakes
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Friday night's quake had an epicenter in the Hindu Kush mountain range, about 150 kilometres east of the northern city of Kunduz, according to the Euro-Mediterranean Seismological Centre and the US Geological Survey. The area is roughly 290 kilometres northeast of Kabul.
Afghanistan lies in a highly seismically active part of the world, and quakes have caused thousands of deaths in recent years.
Last August, a 6.0 earthquake that struck a remote, mountainous part of eastern Afghanistan killed more than 2,200 people. Most casualties were in Kunar province, where people typically live in wood and mud-brick houses along steep valleys.
In November, a 6.3 earthquake struck Samangan province in northern Afghanistan, killing at last 27 people and injuring more than 950. It also damaged historical sites, including Afghanistan's famed Blue Mosque in the city of Mazar-e-Sharif, and the Bagh-e-Jahan Nama Palace in Khulm.
On October 7, 2023, a 6.3 quake followed by strong aftershocks in western Afghanistan killed thousands of people.
