Unlike Modi, Rajiv Gandhi very tall leader: Antony
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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Novak Djokovic declines to address a past interview about getting sick in Australia in 2022
Melbourne, Jan 10: Novak Djokovic did not want to rehash — or even discuss at all, really — what he said Friday was a months-old interview with GQ magazine in which he recalled having high levels of metal in his blood from food he was served while detained before being deported from Australia in 2022.
“I would appreciate not talking more in detail about that, as I would like to focus on the tennis and why I'm here,” Djokovic said ahead of the Australian Open, which starts Sunday (Saturday EST).
“If you want to see what I've said and get more info on that, you can always revert to the article,” Djokovic said about the piece posted online this week.
Djokovic is working with Andy Murray as his coach in Australia in a bid to become the first player in tennis history with 25 Grand Slam singles titles.
In a lengthy GQ story that covered several topics, Djokovic spoke about what happened three years ago, when he was not vaccinated against COVID-19 and was kicked out of Australia.
“I had some health issues. And I realized that in that hotel in Melbourne, I was fed with some food that poisoned me," he said. "I had some discoveries when I came back to Serbia. I never told this to anybody publicly, but ... I had a really high level of heavy metal. Heavy metal. I had ... very high level of lead and mercury.”
The 37-year-old Serbian did not directly answer at the end of Friday's news conference when asked whether he had any evidence linking the blood levels he described to GQ to the food he ate in detention.
