‘Any time, any place’: Rahul challenges PM Modi to debate anti-national charge

Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi on Monday mounted a fresh attack on Prime Minister Narendra Modi, renewing his challenge to debate him on who was an anti-national and controlled by foreign forces “any time, any place”.

Lok Sabha LoP Rahul Gandhi ar the INDIA bloc rally at Ramlila Maidan in New Delhi on November 1 (AICC/ANI Photo)Gandhi’s statement came a day after PM Modi, during his visit to Chhattisgarh’s Bastar on Sunday, said that ideological supporters of the Naxal movement, whom he described as “dimagi Naxals” (people with a Naxal mindset), had infiltrated political parties and various organisations to instigate people against the Constitution and democracy.

In a post on X, Gandhi quote-tweeted an ANI video on PM Modi’s remarks, tagged the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) and said, “Your faces said it all: you didn’t buy the PM’s lies. He called us Naxals. My challenge stands.

Let him debate me on who is anti-national and who is controlled by foreign forces. Any time, any place. My guarantee: after the debate, the PM won’t have the guts to stand in front of a single jawan again.” In the video clip, PM Modi, who had travelled to the operations base of CRPF’s commando unit CoBRA in Karanpur, reiterated that the Naxalites had been eliminated but the threat is not yet over.

“While armed Naxalites have been wiped out from the forests, ‘Dimagi Naxals’ have taken control of several organisations. Even today, they are inciting people against the country’s Constitution and democracy. These ‘Dimagi Naxals’ have also infiltrated several political parties and different organisations.

We must identify them, defeat them and ensure the security of the nation,” PM Modi said on Sunday. PM Modi had made the same point on October 31 while speaking at an event near the Statue of Unity in Gujarat’s Ekta Nagar to mark the 151st birth anniversary of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel.

It was during his Independence Day address in August that PM Modi first referred to ‘Dimagi Naxals’, saying naxalism’s ideological supporters were seeking opportunities to promote violence. Congress leader Pawan Khera followed up on Gandhi’s post on X.

“The question of whether or not to muster the courage after the debate will only come up when there’s a debate,” he said, tagging Gandhi. Congress leader MP Jairam Ramesh accused the Prime Minister of using Diwali to target political rivals and alleged a pattern of branding those who disagree with his government.

The back-and-forth between the Congress and the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party comes amid an ongoing Opposition campaign against chief election commissioner 9CEC) Gyanesh Kumar over the alleged vote theft and the special intensive revision of the electoral roll.

On November 1, the march and rally in the heart of New Delhi on November 1 was the largest show of strength by the INDIA bloc, which has been pushing for Kumar’s removal over allegations of irregularities in the functioning of the Election Commission of India and SIR, which has already removed 130 million names from India’s electoral rolls, many of them under absent, shifted or dead categories.

On October 5, union home minister Amit Shah accused Rahul Gandhi of avoiding parliamentary debate, saying the government is ready to debate the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of voter rolls. “Rahul holds a copy of the Constitution in his hand but respects neither the document nor the position he holds,” Shah said, addressing the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) workers in Karnal on the final day of the BJP’s “Save Democracy, Remove Anarchy” march.

On October 30, Shah told party workers in Uttar Pradesh that he was ready to call a special session of Parliament to discuss allegations of vote theft but added that Congress leader Rahul Gandhi would never agree to it.