Congress says PM is subverting Constitution

Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge with party leaders Rahul Gandhi and Kamal Nath during a public meeting in Mhow on November 26, 2022. Photo: AICC via PTI

The Congress on Saturday said the Constitution was facing a fundamental and existential crisis and blamed the Rashtriya Swayamsevak  Sangh (RSS) for creating that crisis.

The party said the RSS was opposed to the Constitution and subverted it daily.

In his statement on Constitution Day, Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge said the Constitution, which had successfully stood the test of time for over seven decades, was facing an existential crisis for the spirit behind its text.

“This crisis finds its roots in the RSS’s ever-expanding reach within state institutions and the electoral (and by extension judicial) legitimacy of its ideology, with the BJP being in power since 2014. The government has completely surrendered itself and its institutions to the diktats of the RSS, an organisation that pushes hateful propaganda under the garb of social service. In fact, it is no longer incorrect to use the terms RSS and BJP interchangeably,” Mr. Kharge said.

He said the RSS had used the BJP as a political vehicle on every opportunity to curtail freedoms, enshrined in the Constitution. “Illegal has become legal because the fringe has now become mainstream. The foremost tangible spirit of our democracy is being distorted and disrespected by people who are using it as a means to push a completely contrasting agenda. People who perpetrate RSS ideology are against the constitutional guarantee of reservation to Dalits, Advisasis and Backward Classes,” he said.

He said the country had reached a point where there was growing disharmony not just among people but also between governments and States. “Ours is no longer a collaborative federal nation. On what should be a proud day for us all, we are witnessing the onset of what Baba saheb would have referred to as ‘lawless law’, riddled with never-ending infringements on fundamental rights, systematically engineered by the BJP-RSS government since they have been in power,” he said.

He said that with the Bharat Jodo Yatra, the Congress had embarked on a mission to unite the nation at this critical juncture, against the forces of hatred divisiveness and socio- economic deprivation. “We have always taken it upon itself to safeguard our constitutional morality,” he added.

Senior Congress leader Jairam Ramesh said that ideological fountainheads of the BJP had nothing to do in making the Constitution. “In fact the RSS was opposed to the Constitution of India. Desperately wanting to show that he respects the Constitution — while he subverts it daily in letter and spirit — the Prime Minister decided to celebrate November 26 as Constitution Day. This is sheer hypocrisy,” he added.