What would otherwise have been dismissed as a routine meeting between Rahul Gandhi and Chinese ambassador to India Luo Zhaohui snowballed into a full-scale controversy on June 10 thanks to the incompetence of the Congress vice-president’s office.
On the morning of June 10, as the media reported that Gandhi had met Luo on July 8, the Congress first stoutly denied that any such meeting had taken place. Later, the party and Rahul Gandhi himself admitted that the meeting was indeed held, at the behest of Luo.
When the news of the meeting first emerged, Congress party spokespersons, who were obviously clueless about these developments, sought to chide news channels instead for not raising questions about Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Hamburg on the sidelines of the G-20 summit last week, as well as the visit of three Union ministers to China at a time when the two countries are involved in a bitter stand-off on the border.
The party’s chief spokesperson Randeep Surjewala tweeted:
A wanting to be ‘Bhakt’ channel will not question 3 Union Ministers visiting China or PM’s bonhomie & praise at G20 yet run fake news!
— Randeep S Surjewala (@rssurjewala) July 10, 2017
Before MEA & IB sources plant news with ‘Bhakts’,…
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