Rahul Gandhi praises Priyanka Gandhi, says he has much to learn

Rahul Gandhi praised Priyanka Gandhi in the Lok Sabha, saying she achieved in minutes what he could not in years. His remarks, along with comments on women’s role and the Prime Minister, sparked laughter in the House

New Delhi: Rahul Gandhi, the Leader of Opposition (LoP) in the Lok Sabha, openly acknowledged in the House that his sister, Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, accomplished in five minutes what he has been unable to achieve in 20 years, and that he has much to learn from her in political life.

His zestful remarks in the House, first about Priyanka Gandhi and then about his similarity to the Prime Minister, left the members bursting into laughter.

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“My sister achieved in 5 minutes what I couldn’t do in 20 years. Yesterday, I watched her speech and felt proud of her. She made the Home Minister Amit Shah smile,” he said.

Further drawing an analogy, he said that the Prime Minister and he don’t have family issues — again sending the House into peals of laughter.

On Thursday, Priyanka Gandhi made a forceful counter to the government’s defence on the introduction of three bills and took a ‘Chanakya’ swipe at the Home Minister, leaving the latter smiling.

“If Chanakya were alive today, he would have been surprised to see political shrewdness,” she said, gesturing at the Home Minister, in an apparent reference to the government’s handling of the women’s reservation bill and the political messaging around it.

She also said that the women’s reservation was cleverly merged into delimitation, and there was a well-laid-out plan to push it through the House.

Rahul Gandhi, joining the debate on three contentious bills on Day 2, also heaped praise on ‘nari shakti’ and said that they remain the driving force in everyone’s lives.

Further praising nari shakti, he said, “Women are driving force in our national imagination. All of us have been influenced, learnt a lot from the women in our lives from mothers, sisters and others,” he said, while also recalling a story from his teen years, when he was scared of darkness and how his grandmother counselled him and taught him the “truths of life”.