Bhubaneswar, Jul 12 (PTI) As part of the Congress’s nationwide protest against the disqualification of senior leader Rahul Gandhi from the membership of the Parliament, party functionaries in Odisha staged a 'Maun Satyagrah' (silent protest) here on Wednesday.
Wearing black badges on their mouths, AICC general secretary and Odisha in-charge A Chella Kumar, state Congress president Sarat Pattnayak and several other leaders took part in the protest.
“We held a ‘Maun Satyagrah’ as a mark of solidarity towards our leader Rahul Gandhi as well as to protest against the central government’s act of throttling the voice of opposition both inside and outside Parliament,” Chella Kumar told reporters.
Kumar accused Prime Minister Narendra Modi of not listening to the opposition.
“The PM hardly comes to Parliament. Whenever he comes, he delivers speeches and does not listen to anyone," he said.
Kumar also supported West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee who raised questions on the Prime Minister’s silence over the Manipur issue.
“I totally agree with the West Bengal CM. When Manipur was burning, where was the country’s Prime Minister? Till today, he has not uttered a word to console the people of Manipur,” the Congress leader said.
Kumar, however, also slammed the incidents of violence during the panchayat polls in West Bengal.
The call for the nationwide Maun Satyagrah was given by the Congress to protest Rahul Gandhi’s disqualification from the Lok Sabha in March after he was convicted by a Surat court in Gujarat in a 2019 criminal defamation case.
The Gujarat High Court had also on July 7 dismissed Gandhi's plea seeking a stay on his conviction in the case over his "Modi surname" remark.