Taking a dig at Prime Minister Narendra Modi over his photograph that appeared in this year’s Khadi and Village Industries Commission (KVIC) calendar, Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi on Monday said that the Prime Minister was a man of contradictions.
“Look at the contradiction, a man who wears a Rs. 15 lakh suit is posing with the charkha,” said Mr. Gandhi, addressing an Uttarakhand Congress workers’ gathering at Rishikes. “Charkha represents the hard work of the poor of the country. The charkha means handicraft. It is a symbol of connecting the poor to the mainstream economy of the country... On the one hand Narendra Modiji gets a picture clicked with the charkha, and on the other hand he favours the 50 big corporates of the country. This is the contradiction [I am talking about].”
Mocking Mr. Modi over the picture, he said, “Next year during the Ramleela you won’t see [Lord] Ram, you’ll see Modiji… There’ll be an order that everyone enacting Lord Ram in Ramleela must put on Modi ji’s masks on their faces.”
Alleging that Mr. Modi was practising the politics of imposing fear in the minds of the poor, Mr. Gandhi said that “Modi ji wants that all other voices must be silenced and people must listen to only Modi ji’s Mann Ki Baat. But the country cannot be run like this.”
During the rally, he showed his kurta to the party workers and said, “My kurta is torn at places, but Modi ji’s kurta will never be torn. His clothes are always perfect even though Modi ji claims his politics is for the poor.”