Congress justifies Azad's remarks on demonetisation deaths

New Delhi: The Congress on Friday justified its senior leader Ghulam Nabi Azad's remarks drawing a comparison between the Uri terror attack casualties and the deaths after demonetisation which has triggered a row, and said Prime Minister Narendra Modi was communalising the issue.
"There is no question of defending something that was absolutely correct. What Azad said that 20 of our soldiers laid down their lives in the Uri attack, they laid down their lives defending the country and we are proud of them.
"But one autocratic decision of a dictatorial prime minister has killed 55 innocent people. Who is responsible for it?" Congress chief spokesperson Randeep Surjewala asked.
"Azad rightly said yesterday that if the one questioning him (the PM) is a Hindu, he is an anti-national, and if a Muslim, then a Pakistani and this country will never accept these things," he told reporters.
Surjewala said the country is proud of its soldiers who defend and laid down their lives for the country.
"But what about that Indian who is secure because of sacrifice of those soldiers but who is insecure and unsafe and has to die on account of economic anarchy heaped upon by the prime minister. And that is the comparison that Ghulam Nabiji brought about. So if anybody is guilty, anybody is acting in an autocratic manner it is the BJP and the Modi government," he said.
"I have the right to question the prime minister and the Modi government cannot take away this right granted to the 125 crore Indians through the Constitution by its makers," he said, adding Modi has first put the country's 125 crore people to harassment and 55 people died due to his "Tughlaqi order".
Another Congress leader, Anand Sharma, also defended Azad alleging that BJP was giving communal twist to his remarks. "Ghulam Nabi Azad is not just the Leader of Opposition in Rajya Sabha but has been the chief minister of Jammu and Kashmir on whose life there have been 26 bids by terrorists. He is a man who has always stood for the nation, do we have such a situation now that BJP will decide who is a nationalist and who is not," Sharma said.
"In the Uri attack, 19 of our soldiers were martyred, but may more people have died after demonetisation. It is shameful that BJP is trying to give this a communal twist," he said.