"Political Malice Do Not Benefit Country": Mayawati On Rahul Gandhi Row

A day after Rahul Gandhi was disqualified from Parliament, Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) president Mayawati on Saturday referred to the Emergency as she took a swipe at both the Congress and the BJP, saying political malice and hatred had not benefited the country in the past and neither will in the future.

She said the Congress must think whether what happened during the Emergency in 1975 and what is happening now with its leader Rahul Gandhi are justified.

In a series of tweets, Mayawati said the Congress earlier and the BJP government now, due to their "politics of extreme selfishness", hardly focussed on public welfare and removal of serious problems of poverty, unemployment and backwardness.

"It is very sad and unfortunate," she said in a tweet in Hindi.

"Political malice, hatred, etc. towards each other have neither benefited the country in the past nor is it going to benefit it in the future," the former Uttar Pradesh chief minister said.

She said it is clear that had successive governments in the past 75 years worked with honesty and integrity according to the sacred intention of the Constitution and democratic norms and traditions, "India would have become a truly leading and ideal humanitarian and developed country." 

Mr Gandhi, who represented Wayanad in Kerala in Lok Sabha, was disqualified from Parliament on Friday, a day after a court in Gujarat sentenced him to two years' imprisonment in a criminal defamation case. 

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)