Zeenews Bureau
New Delhi: Breaking her silence on the derogatory comments made by her party’s UP chief Rita B Joshi, Congress president Sonia Gandhi while terming her statements as unacceptable, also added that the UP govt is acting highhandedly against political opponents.
Dubbing the entire sequence of events in which Joshi's house was burnt, as "very unfortunate", Gandhi expressed "deep pain and anguish" over the developments.
"The Congress stands for highest standards in public
debate on issues that touch the people...The party regrets the
personal elements in reference to UP Chief Minister Mayawati
in Rita Bahuguna Joshi's remarks," AICC General Secretary
Janardan Dwivedi said.
At the same time, the statement also made plain that
the credibility and fairness of the Mayawati regime would be
on test in the manner it deals with arsonists who, in a
"deeply condemnable incident", set Joshi's house on fire.
Dwivedi and Congress General Secretary Digvijay Singh
steered clear of questions whether Joshi would be removed from
her post in the wake of her remarks.
Noting that she was in jail now, Dwivedi said, "We will
seek an explanation and see what can be done after that."
Party sources later said that Congress is expected to
launch a 'jail bharo' if Bahuguna is not released on bail.
A senior leader, who declined to be identified, said
the Congress would not hesitate to have a confrontation with
BSP as the party wants to widen its base among Dalits.
Rita Bahuguna Joshi, the Uttar Pradesh Congress chief, was arrested early Thursday for derogatory remarks against Chief Minister Mayawati and her home was set on fire, triggering a murky political battle that also paralysed parliament.
Joshi was arrested in Ghaziabad, when she was going to New Delhi, in the wee hours of Thursday. Just about the same time, her house in Lucknow was attacked and torched by a mob.
Joshi was charged under the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989, for derogatory remarks against the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) chief, and sent to Moradabad jail Thursday morning on 14 days' judicial custody.
At a meeting in Moradabad Wednesday, Joshi had mocked at the state director general of police flying down to Dalit rape victims in recent days and spending huge amounts to distribute compensation of Rs.25,000 to Rs.75,000 to each of them.
She reportedly told the women that they should not only throw the compensation money back at the government's face, but if this was how the rape victims were going to get justice, "tell her (Mayawati) we would give Rs.1 crore" if she faced the same trauma.
Joshi Thursday clarified: "I had simply sought to draw people's attention to the fact that Mayawati's dole of Rs.25,000 to every Dalit rape victim was quite ironical as the state police chief was spending lakhs on the helicopter ride that he undertakes to hand over that paltry amount."
"My intention was to remind Mayawati that being a woman she should realise that a paltry monetary compensation cannot make up for what a woman loses on account of rape," she told reporters.
"As soon as I found that my statement had been twisted, I promptly made it a point to offer my apologies," Joshi said.
She termed the attack on her house as "state-sponsored terrorism".
Mayawati, however, said Joshi's earlier remarks were "objectionable, reprehensible and highly condemnable", and also targeted Congress president Sonia Gandhi.
"The manner in which Sonia Gandhi has failed to chastise her and has chosen to remain silent arouses suspicion that whatever this woman did was on the direction of the Congress high command," Mayawati told a press conference in Lucknow.
She said BSP workers were not responsible for the attack on Joshi's house and blamed the Congress for it.
"I have a feeling that the attack has been stage-managed by the Congress itself with the intent to divert the main issue of Joshi's highly condemnable remarks against me," she said, though she also ordered an inquiry into the incident.
The events in the state also sparked an uproar in parliament, forcing the Lok Sabha speaker and the Rajya Sabha chairman to adjourn the houses for the day after repeated adjournments.
The Congress sought to dissociate itself from the remarks, but called the assault on Joshi's house "state-sponsored vandalism by a desperate Mayawati" after below-expectation performance in the April-May Lok Sabha elections.
The main opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) spoke in different voices. Its deputy leader in the Lok Sabha Sushma Swaraj demanded Gandhi's apology.
"If the Congress president apologises, her image and dignity will get a boost," Swaraj said.
But party MP from Uttar Pradesh Maneka Gandhi joined the state's main opposition Samajwadi Party in demanding that the BSP government should be dismissed.
"The time has come for the Uttar Pradesh government to be dismissed. In every single constituency, people have been sent to jail for absolutely nothing," Maneka Gandhi said.
Maneka Gandhi had vehemently criticised Mayawati when her son Varun Gandhi, now MP from Pilibhit, was booked under the National Security Act for his reported hate speeches.