Rahul must apologise for defaming India on foreign soil: Chugh

New Delhi, March 9 (IANS) BJP National General Secretary Tarun Chugh on Thursday hit out at senior Congress leader Rahul Gandhi for "tarnishing the image of India and Prime Minister Narendra Modi on foreign lands".

Taking strong exception to Rahul's speech in Cambridge university recently, Chugh said that at a time when India has been given the proud responsibility of leading the G20 group, Gandhi's "defamatory address demonstrated that he was still wearing Italian glasses to look at India".

Addressing MBA students at Cambridge Judge Business School on the topic of 'Learning to Listen in the 21st Century', Rahul Gandhi had said that opposition parties are under 'constant pressure' as numerous cases have been slapped on them by the BJP government.

“Indian democracy is under attack. The institutional framework which is required for a democracy -- Parliament, free press, the judiciary, just the idea of mobilisation -- these are all getting constrained. We are facing an attack on the basic structure of democracy,” Rahul Gandhi had said.

Chugh said that at a time when the entire world is looking up to India and India has become a vibrant example of democracy, Rahul's address at Cambridge was a piece of "ridicule for him and the Congress".

"Rahul's misleading and negative propaganda against India to defame all Indians speaks of bankruptcy in the Congress and it's thinking," Chugh added in a statement.

He said that Rahul Gandhi should have talked about a large number of governance initiatives that Modi government has brought about but his Italian glasses don't let him see that and for this he owes an apology to the country.