Leader of Opposition Rahul Gandhi lauded Priyanka Gandhi's speech in the Lok Sabha on Friday and said it was better than his maiden speech in the House.
Congress leader Priyanka Gandhi Vadra claimed that Prime Minister Narendra Modi was unmoved over the incidents of violence in Sambhal and Manipur and had not understood that the Constitution was not the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh's (RSS) rulebook.
Participating in a debate on the Constitution in the Lok Sabha, the member of Parliament from Kerala's Wayanad said the Constitution is a protective shield of justice, unity and freedom of expression, but the BJP-led government has made every effort to break it in the last 10 years.
In her maiden speech in the Lok Sabha as an MP, Congress general secretary Gandhi said had it not been for the Lok Sabha election results, in which the Bharatiya Janata Party scraped through to victory, the government would have started work on changing the Constitution.
Participating in a debate on the Constitution in the Lok Sabha, she said the Constitution was a protective shield of justice, unity and freedom of expression but the government made every effort to break it during the past 10 years.
Asked about the speech, Congress leader and Priyanka Gandhi's brother Rahul Gandhi told reporters outside Parliament, "Wonderful speech.... Better than my maiden speech, let us put it like that."
In a similar vein, senior Congress leader Shashi Tharoor on Friday hailed Priyanka Gandhi Vadra's maiden speech in Parliament, saying she did not speak like a first-time MP and rightly pointed out to the government that it should talk about current times rather than harping on the past.
Asked about her speech, Tharoor told reporters, "I think it was an excellent maiden speech. She did not speak like a first-time parliamentarian who, as she said, has had only 15 days in Parliament. She spoke with tremendous maturity, tremendous grace, tremendous intelligence. I was very impressed."
"The difficulty in speaking for the first time is whether you should show passion or shout or whether you come across in a sensible, dignified and rational way. I think she was right to choose the latter," the former Union minister said.
Tharoor said that since Union minister Rajnath Singh had made a very strong speech attacking the history of the Congress, Gandhi very rightly pointed out that "when will you talk about today, why should you talk about yesterday".
"It was very effective and she made all the points, all the key issues that we have seen and trouble us in the country that the way in which the Constitution has been working. She has done a wonderful job," he said.
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