Congress workers in MP protest with `locked' mouths; CM Chouhan says Rahul Gandhi should have put lock on his mouth

Congress workers on Saturday continued their protest against the disqualification of party leader Rahul Gandhi as a Lok Sabha member by covering their mouths with black bands and tying locks on them.

Mocking the protest, Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan said Rahul Gandhi should have put a lock on his own mouth when he made the statement which led to his conviction for defamation. State Congress leader Bhupendra Gupta said the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) under Prime Minister Narendra Modi wanted to lock the opposition up to throttle democracy in India. In Khandwa district, police detained some 20 Congress workers as they tried to stage a protest outside the local BJP office.

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In a video statement, CM Chouhan said Congress workers staged a protest with locks tied to their mouths, but "why did Rahul Gandhi not lock his mouth when he spoke ill of the Modi community?" “Is it a sin to be born in a backward community?...The Congress has become a problem for the country today, and Rahul Gandhi has become a problem for the Congres,” he added.

Rahul Gandhi, representing Wayanad parliamentary constituency in Kerala, was disqualified from the Lok Sabha after his conviction in a defamation case by a court in Surat in Gujarat on Thursday.