Agency, Bhatinda :Rahul Gandhi yesterday responded to digs at his visits to homes of Dalits, amid a controversy over yoga teacher Ramdev’s comment that the purpose of these visits was “honeymoon and picnic.”While campaigning in Punjab, Gandhi said, “The BJP and Narendra Modi have always made fun of me whenever I visit Dalits, they have been saying various things about it. I can’t remember if Modi has paid a visit to any Dalit, even though he does eat at the house of Adani, who is a rich man.”The Congress vice president has been accusing Modi, the chief minister of Gujarat, of favouring the Adani group and giving it thousands of acres of land at the rate of one rupee a square metre.Last week, the BJP’s prime ministerial candidate had sneered that Rahul Gandhi visits homes of the poor like tourists who visit the Taj Mahal. “These people are born with a silver spoon in their mouth, they want to see poverty. They wonder whether the poor have two legs, two hands, does the poor also have a voice. These people go on poverty tourism,” Modi had said.Gandhi yesterday said, “They said I go for picnics at Dalits’ homes, just because he is poor you can’t eat at his house? Is this what they mean?”This is the 43-year-old Congress leader’s first response to the controversial comments of Ramdev last week that he visits Dalit homes for “honeymoon and picnic.”The yoga teacher, who has endorsed the BJP, has since apologized, but he has been booked under a law that punishes any slur on backward castes. He has also been banned from holding meetings in Himachal Pradesh and Lucknow in Uttar Pradesh.
