MADURAI/KANYAKUMARI: Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, who is on a Bharat Jodo Yatra, on Friday met controversial catholic priest George Ponnaiah in Kanyakumari district.
A video clip of Rahul Gandhi's interaction with the pastor went viral, in which Rahul can be heard asking, "Jesus Christ is a form of God? Is that right?" to which George Ponnaiah replies, "He is the real God." Ponnaiah goes on to say, "God reveals him(self) as a man, a real person ... not like Shakti ... so we see a human person." Ponniah has a history of making provocative statements that have landed him in trouble in the past.
BJP national spokesman Shehzad Poonawalla attacked Rahul Gandhi over his meeting with Ponnaiah saying, "Bharat Jodo with Bharat Todo icons?"
Ponnaiah was arrested in July last year for his hate speech targeting a community.
On his fourth day of his Bharat Jodo Yatra in Kanyakumari district, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi interacted with youth as well as disabled people, and highlighted their grievances.
He commenced the day from a private school at Mulagumoodu in the morning after hoisting the national flag and taking photographs with the students.
Many gathered on the roadsides as he interacted with a few of them and posed for selfies. The yatra halted at a college in Marthandam in the afternoon. After lunch, Rahul met a few people with disabilities who put forward their grievances.
“Equal opportunity is true inclusion, anything less than that is unacceptable,” he tweeted. About 42% of the youth are unemployed, he said.
He met Tamil Nadu's first woman bus driver Vasanthakumari and briefly interacted with sanitary workers at Marthandam as also a group of local unemployed youth who accompanied him in the district.
After resuming his yatra from Marthandam in the evening, he had tea at a roadside shop where he interacted with party workers and a few other people.
“As we bid adieu to the land of Thiruvalluvar and Kamaraj, I thank the people of Tamil Nadu for the immense love and support they have given to Bharat Jodo Yatra,” he tweeted before proceeding to Kerala. The 3,750km yatra from Kanyakumari to Kashmir was launched from the district on September 7