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Delhi's Public Works Department, which comes within the administrative ambit of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) government, on Friday razed the stairs of the under-construction headquarters of the Congress party after they were found to be encroaching the footpath towards the DDU Road in the national capital, an official said.
A PWD personnel at the spot said a survey of the under-construction building revealed that the stairs were built on the footpath and, hence, had to be demolished. "A PWD survey revealed that the stairs were encroaching a footpath, thus necessitating the demolition," the PWD official said. The demolition exercise at the under-construction Congress headquarters coincided with the disqualification of Rahul Gandhi as a member of the Lok Sabha on Friday. The disqualification came in the wake of his conviction by a Surat court in a 2019 defamation case. Rahul was sentenced to two years in prison for a remark using the surname 'Modi' at a rally in Karnataka in the run-up to the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. Responding to his disqualification, Rahul said he was fighting for the restoration of the voice of India and was ready to pay any price for it. Meanwhile, the Congress on Friday came down heavily on the Centre over Rahul's disqualification as a member of Parliament, calling it a "strangulation of democracy" while exuding confidence that the disqualification will be revoked through a stay on his conviction by a higher court. "The issue before us is political, more than it is legal. It is a political issue because it signifies the systematic, repetitive emasculation of democratic institutions by the ruling party. It signifies the strangulation of democracy itself. We know that defamation is an exception to free speech, but over the last several years, we have had repeated examples of unthinkable assaults on freedom of speech, more importantly, freedom after speech. We all know that Rahul Gandhi has been speaking fearlessly inside and outside Parliament. He is paying a price for it," Congress national spokesperson Abhishek Manu Singhvi said. He alleged that the Centre was resorting to new methods to "throttle" Rahul Gandhi's voice. "This government is rattled because he clearly speaks with facts and figures on demonetisation. Be it the supposed clean chit to China, or the GST, he is consistently aggressive and open in his questioning. Therefore this government is finding new techniques of throttling his voice," Singhvi said. (ANI)
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