Thiruvananthapuram, May 21: Rajiv Gandhi was a very tall leader unlike Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the Congress agenda is to see that Modi is ousted from power since he has butchered the sanctity of democracy, senior Congress leader A.K. Antony said on Monday.
"Rajiv Gandhi as Prime Minister sacrificed Congress governments in then troubled Punjab, Assam, and Mizoram to ensure that peace returned to these states, while the Bharatiya Janata Party governments (in the states) are used by Modi to unsettle peace," the former Defence Minister said at a party meeting here held to commemorate the death anniversary of Rajiv Gandhi.
Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated on May 21, 1991, by a woman operative of the now-vanquished Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam at a rally in Tamil Nadu's Sriperumbudur town in a bomb blast.
"Modi is one who gives the least importance to values, while Rajiv Gandhi was one who stood for these. Had the former Prime Minister been alive, by now India would have reached among the top nations of the world. It was during his times that huge strides was made in the information technology and telecommunication sectors," he added.
"The process to oust Modi from power has already started. We will accomplish the task by joining hands with secular parties. That's what we saw in Karnataka where the Congress and Janata Dal-Secular teamed up (to keep the BJP out of power)," Antony said.
Antony also accused Modi of misusing the Karnataka Governor's office to ensure that even when the Congress-JD-S combine had more seats in the new Assembly than the BJP, it was not invited to form the government.
"Six Union Ministers led by Piyush Goyal stayed put in Bengaluru to see that a minority BJP government got a majority through horse trading," the senior Congress leader said.
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Bareilly (UP), Nov 24: Three people died when their car fell into the Ramganga river from a partially constructed bridge here on Sunday, police said, adding that they suspect the driver was misled by its navigation system into taking the unsafe route.
The accident occurred around 10 am on the Khalpur-Dataganj road when the victims were travelling from Bareilly to Dataganj in the Badaun district, they said.
"Earlier this year, floods had caused the front portion of the bridge to collapse into the river, but this change had not been updated in the system," Circle Officer Ashutosh Shivam said.
The driver was using a navigation system and did not realise that the bridge was unsafe, driving the car off the damaged section, the police said.
There were no safety barriers or warning signs on the approach to the damaged bridge, leading to the fatal accident, Shivam said.
Upon receiving information, police teams from Faridpur, Bareilly and Dataganj police station rushed to the spot. They recovered the vehicle and the bodies from the river, Shivam added.
The circle officer said that bodies had been sent for post-mortem. Further investigation into the matter is underway.
— Bareilly Police (@bareillypolice) November 24, 2024