NEW DELHI, June 29: Two senior Congress leaders, one a Sonia Gandhi loyalist and the other from the G-23 camp of dissenters, were involved in a statement war on Wednesday over the Narendra Modi government’s “Agnipath” army recruitment scheme.
The former Union Ministers Jairam Ramesh, who is the Congress general secretary in charge of communications, and Manish Tewari on Wednesday sparred on social media after Ramesh took to twitter to distance Congress from Tewari’s views on the Agnipath scheme.
“Manish Tewari, INC MP, has written an article on Agnipath. While @INCIndia is the only democratic party, it must be said his views are entirely his own & not of the party, which firmly believes Agnipath is anti-national security & anti-youth, bulldozed through without discussion,” tweeted Ramesh, a Sonia Gandhi loyalist.
While the Congress has been holding nation-wide satyagrahas and dharnas against the new recruitment scheme for the defence services, Tewari wrote an opinion piece in a prominent English newspaper in favour of the scheme stating it was part of a larger process of reform and modernisation of the defence forces.
“My Take: Why Defence recruitment reform is in larger National Interest,” tweeted Tewari, sharing the link to his opinion piece.
The Lok Sabha member from Anandpur Sahib constituency of Punjab has been part of a ginger group that had challenged the leadership on the issue of inner-party reforms. Soon after his views were contradicted by Ramesh, he responded once again.
“The tag line of the article does say – The views are personal. I wish @Jairam_Ramesh ji would have read it right till the very end. He may see it here now,” Tewari tweeted, sharing the screenshot of the part that mentioned that the views of the author were “personal.”
(Manas Dasgupta)
