Anil Antony quits party responsibilities amid backlash on BBC documentary tweet

Thiruvananthapuram

Congress Working Committee member and veteran leader A.K. Antony’s son and the party’s national digital media cell chief, Anil. K. Antony, has resigned from his organisational responsibilities.

Mr. Antony’s controversial tweet on Tuesday that the BBC documentary critical of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s over the 2002 Gujarart riots undermined India’s sovereignty triggered a furious backlash and elicited Congress leadership’s strong disapproval.

It also did not help Mr. Antony or the Congress that his father served as the chairperson of the party’s disciplinary action committee.

Even as Mr. Antony’s controversial tweet hit the headlines, shocked Congress workers braved the ire of belligerent Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) activists to hold public screenings of the documentary. It, however, put the party in a politically awkward position.

The KPCC reportedly felt that the “tactless tweet” undermined the party’s fight against Sangh Parivar’s “unceasing attempts” at social silencing and systematic depluralising of India’s secular polity by denying free speech and shutting out dissenters and contrarian views from the public debate.

State Youth Congress president Shafi Parambil, MLA, said Mr. Antony was patently wrong to suggest that India’s sovereignty was constitutionally moored to Mr. Modi’s political reputation.

An embattled Mr. Antony said on Wednesday that he was quitting party posts in the face of “intolerant calls to retract the tweet”.