CM Rekha Gupta targets Rahul Gandhi over Congress MP's JNU harassment case
Synopsis
Key Takeaways
Eleven JNU students allege sexual harassment by a sitting Congress MP — and their party said nothing. Then, when women arrived at Congress headquarters to demand answers, Delhi Chief Minister Rekha Gupta says they were met with abuse and assault. On Monday, October 12, 2026, Gupta fired a pointed broadside at Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, demanding he account for his party's silence and his workers' conduct.
The allegations against Congress MP Bimol Akoijam
Bimol Akoijam, the Congress MP at the centre of the storm, faces sexual harassment allegations filed by 11 female students at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) in New Delhi. According to Gupta's post, the university took swift institutional action — dismissing Akoijam — and police registered an FIR against him. The accusations are serious. The institutional response, on the record, was unambiguous.
What followed from Congress, Gupta argues, was silence. No public condemnation from the party leadership. No statement from Gandhi, who has built a national political identity around championing women's rights and dignity.
Women at Congress HQ — and what Gupta says happened next
A group of women, seeking answers to that silence, marched to Congress headquarters. CM Gupta alleges that instead of engagement, they faced maarpit aur gaali-galoch — physical assault and verbal abuse — at the hands of Congress workers. The claim, if substantiated, sharpens the political charge dramatically: the party accused of looking away from harassment inside a university allegedly replicated the pattern at its own front door.
Gupta's post closes with a direct question to Gandhi: 'Rahul Gandhi, kya yahi hai aapka mahila samman?' — 'Rahul Gandhi, is this your respect for women?' The hashtag #SmashTheHypocrisyRaGa accompanied the post, signalling a coordinated BJP messaging push.
The political stakes of the BJP's 'hypocrisy' frame
BJP has long sought to puncture Congress's positioning as the party most committed to women's safety and dignity. An allegation of this nature — a Congress MP accused by eleven students, the party staying quiet, and then women protesters allegedly roughed up — hands the ruling party a ready-made narrative. Gupta, as Delhi's Chief Minister, carries institutional credibility when raising law-and-order and women's safety issues in the capital.
Congress has not publicly responded to the specific claims about the altercation at its headquarters. The allegations made in the post — particularly the physical assault on women protesters — remain to be verified independently. But the political clock is running: every hour of silence from the Gandhi camp extends the story's news cycle and risks lending the BJP's framing more oxygen.