Reactions to Rahul Gandhi’s speech & post-speech gesture

A few of the observations in the media are as follows:

Shekhar Gupta in The Print:

Rahul Gandhi has risen in stature

Should the BJP even worry about Rahul? The truth is BJP has never not taken him seriously. One “suit-boot” remark from him changed the political economy of the Modi government. More evidence came as this session began. The BJP may insist its retreat on the RTI Act amendments had nothing to do with Rahul’s opposition, but it is unlikely that anybody will be convinced, except doting Speaker Sumitra Mahajan.

After this debate, the BJP will shed any remaining doubts as to who is their man to attack. By the time you read this column, the BJP would have fielded its warrior army to assert how Rahul doesn’t matter. It will mean exactly the opposite. If you are disdainful of somebody, you ignore, not obsess over him.

He (Rahul Gandhi) has risen in stature as the pre-eminent leader of the opposition in a Parliament where his party is too tiny to even have a formal Leader of Opposition. With this, Rahul has also staked a claim to the leadership of the pre-eminent anti-Modi front in the next elections.

Swati Chaturvedi on NDTV.Com

Rahul Gandhi’s attack forces Govt on the backfoot

Gandhi's sharpest-ever political attack on Modi was designed to ensure that he was seen as the chief contender to the PM. And despite the BJP's claim that it does not take Gandhi seriously, an array of cabinet ministers and spokies are always deployed to target him - does this prove how lightweight he is? The Modi-Shah duo changed course and abandoned the Land Acquisition Ordinance after Gandhi's "suit boot" jibe found traction; now, changes to the Right to Information Act are being withheld after Gandhi attacked it.

Editorial in Newscentral 24x7

No answer to issues raised by RG

To remain focused only on Gandhi’s post-speech gesture – a hug and a wink – would be to diminish the importance of issues raised by him, with a passion, heft and force, that left Modi and the BJP with no answers.

These are the questions, about Modi’s promises and performance – from black money to jobs to smart cities to farmers’ incomes to industrial decline to economic stagnation to demonetisation disaster – which will now be asked again and again till May 2019. Modi can’t run away from answering them, hiding behind his petty assaults on the Gandhi family or by diverting attention to Hindu-Muslim polarisation.

The forceful manner in which Gandhi posited his party’s message of love versus Modi’s language of hate, simply blunted the knife of ‘Hindu-Muslim’ polarisation.

Swati Chaturvedi on Newscentral. com

The speech hit where it hurts

Gandhi made a losing vote of confidence irrelevant by hugging a terrified Modi, the self-styled 56-inch chest PM, who prefers to terrify people and is a serial hugger of foreign leaders. A stunned Modi refused to hug Gandhi back, but then he got his scattered wits together, recognised the presence of the TV cameras and did a half-hearted handshake with Gandhi. He even tried to patronise Gandhi with a half-pat on the Congress leader’s back, but Gandhi’s wink with his Congress colleagues as he returned to his seat won the nation over.

The hug that sent the headlines trending and TV screens drooling followed a no holds barred speech, as Gandhi landed a surgical strike on Modi’s spin of “good governance”. He shattered the claims of Modi and Shah to smithereens, granularly ripping it apart on a range of issues which hit the ruling party where it hurts.