Dibrugarh, May 3: Criticising Congress leader Rahul Gandhi without mentioning his name, Vice President Jagdeep Dhankhar on Wednesday wondered "why some of us decry our democracy within and outside the country" while describing India as "the mother of democracy and the world's most vibrant democracy".
The Vice President said this during his speech while attending the convocation of the Dibrugarh University located on the outskirts of this upper Assam town.
Dhankar's jibe was apparently aimed at Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, who had said in a Cambridge university lecture that India's democracy is under threat.
Calling Parliament "the temple of our democracy", the Vice President emphasised that it is a platform where issues of public interest are debated, deliberated, discussed and decided, but prolonged disruptions, he added, undermine the esteem and confidence which people repose in their representative institutions.
Therefore, he called for generating an ecosystem so that "the parliamentarians respond positively to the spirit and essence of the founders of our Constitution".
He underlined that freedom of expression has not been subjected to any enforced silence in India.
Dhankhar also said that education is the most effective and transformative mechanism to bring about equity, equality and progress in society.
