Lucknow: Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav on Sunday said the bigger question facing the country is whether democracy will survive or not. "The biggest question is whether democracy will survive or not. BJP is not a party, it is an organization," he said.
Akhilesh welcomed the Congress' "Sanklap Satyagraha" to protest against the disqualification of Rahul Gandhi as a member of the Lok Sabha. "I want to congratulate the Congress party and Rahul Gandhi for the satyagraha," the former UP chief minister said.
The Congress is holding Sankalp Satyagraha at Raj Ghat. Priyanka Gandhi arrived at Raj Ghat for the protest on Sunday. Congress President Mallikarjun Kharge, party general secretary KC Venugopal and several other party leaders also joined the protest.
SP chief however reminded that what happened with Rahul Gandhi had also happened with Azam Khan and his son as well. Samajwadi Party leader Azam Khan was disqualified from the Uttar Pradesh Assembly in October 2022 after being sentenced to three years in jail in a hate speech case. He was elected MLA from the Rampur Sadar constituency, which the BJP wrested in the bypoll last year.
"If the educated people of our country start accepting lies as truth then what will happen to the democracy of the country," Akhilesh wondered. Rahul Gandhi, on Friday, was disqualified as a member of the Lok Sabha, a day after a Surat court sentenced him to two-year imprisonment in a defamation case filed against him over his 'Modi surname' remark.
The decision came pertaining to his remark made in April 2019, where he had said "how come all the thieves have Modi as the common surname" at a Lok Sabha election rally at Kolar in Karnataka. The court approved Gandhi's bail on a surety and stayed the sentence for 30 days to allow him to approach the higher courts.
