NEW DELHI: Thiruvananthapuram MP Shashi Tharoor on Tuesday said that “standards should not be lowered” as the Bharatiya Janata Party latched on to Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge‘s recent ‘people illiterate in Gujarat’ remark. The Congress chief on Sunday had stirred row after saying that voters in Kerala were “educated and clever” and could not be misled, unlike those in Gujarat and some other places.Responding to a question on Kharge’s remarks, Tharoor said, “In general, I have deplored in the past the decline in political discourse. We have even seen cases filed against the Assam chief minister for hate speech. That should not be the direction of our politics. And I must say our standards should not be lowered to that of those who use bad language in politics.” “I really hope that all of us will respect the public by giving them good reasons to vote in our favor and against others, rather than using language that frankly coarsens the public debate,” he added.This comes after Kharge, while addressing a rally in Kerala’s Idukki, said the people of Kerala are “educated and clever” and cannot be misled, unlike those in Gujarat and some other places.“Don’t misguide the people of Kerala. They are very clever, they are educated. Modi ji, Vijay (chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan), you both can fool those who are illiterate in Gujarat or other places, but you can’t fool Kerala people,” Kharge said.The BJP strongly rebuked Kharge, saying his remarks amounted to an insult to six crore people of Gujarat and the state’s legacy of giving the country Mahatma Gandhi, Sardar Patel, and Prime Minister Narendra Modi.“The land of Gujarat that gave the country Mahatma Gandhi, the Gujarat that gave the country the Iron Man Sardar Patel, the Gujarat that gave the country’s most popular PM Narendra Modi, the Gujarat that showed a new model of development to the entire world—an insult to its 6 crore Gujaratis? Why does Congress hate Gujarat so much? Why do you keep targeting the people of Gujarat time and again? Did the people of Gujarat throw you out of power, and is this revenge? This statement doesn’t show your frustration—it reveals your true stature,” Gujarat deputy chief minister Harsh Sanghavi said in a social media post on X.
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“The Congress, which insults this sacred land of Gandhi and Patel, has always been rejected by Gujarat’s aware public, and it will continue to be rejected in the future too. Gujarat will not forgive,” he added.The CPM-led LDF and the Congress-led UDF are set to lock horns for the 140-seat Kerala Assembly polls on April 9. The results are scheduled for May 4.
