Kharge made INDIA president to shield Gandhi family from blame, says Joshi

Union Parliamentary Affairs Minister Pralhad Joshi on Monday said the Congress had make Mallikarjuna Kharge the president of I.N.D.I.A bloc only to shield the Gandhi family from blame for the defeat the party would face in the Lok Sabha elections.

The minister, speaking to reporters in Hubballi, said the new political combine led by the Congress had no other existence except as a namesake entity, which would show up for photo-ops. The I.N.D.I.A constituent parties were already quarrelling in Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh, and Kerala.

In Kerala, Congress workers were complaining that the LDF regime there was beating them up and in West Bengal, chief minister Mamata Banerjee was talking of leaving the combine.


The Congress had reached a helpless state because of all this, the minister said, and added this was the reason why the party was making Kharge a sacrificial goat.

On the Bharat Jodo Nyaya Yatra of AICC leader Rahul Gandhi, the minister took potshots at him wondering if he bothered to dispense justice to anyone when the UPA was in power. When he was the uncrowned king of the UPA government he did not do any justice. Now he was leading a yatra for justice. Let God give him good sense, Joshi said.

On the speculations that former Chief Minister Jagadish Shettar would return to the BJP, Joshi said there had been no discussion about that and he had nothing to do with that.