A day after seeking a public apology from the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) chief Mohan Bhagwat for his controversial remark on the Indian Army, Congress president Rahul Gandhi said the RSS is guiding Prime Minister Narendra Modi and all Union Ministers in framing policies and programmes of the NDA government. “For every single Ministryat the national level, there is an OSD (officer on special duty) from the RSS working with the Ministry. The Minister is guided by the RSS on what to do,” Mr. Gandhi said at an interactive session with professionals and the business community in Kalaburagi on Tuesday, the last day of his Janaashirwada Yatra in the Hyderabad Karnataka region.
Alleging that demonetisation was a disaster, he said: “You know from where the idea of ‘notebandi’ came from? Do you know who gave the idea to the PM of the country? It was not the Reserve Bank of India, and not Finance Minister Arun Jaitley. It was not from the office of the Finance Ministry. The idea was given by a particular ideologue of the RSS. The RSS gives the idea, and the Prime Minister launches it.”
Criticising Mr. Modi’s governance style, he said, “The BJP’s approach is to capture. Here is an institution, let us capture it, as opposed to allowing the institution to serve the people and allowing the people of India to capture the institution. Our job as a party is to run the political system, and our job is not to run and capture the institution.” He slammed the Centre’s move to reform the Medical Council of India.”
“We [Congress] believe that institutions of India do not belong to the Congress, but they belong to the people. Our tendency always is to democratise the institutions and their tendency is to bureaucratise the institutions and through the bureaucratisation they penetrate their people,” Mr. Gandhi said.
“Once you capture the institution from the people, you (Govt)don’t know what to do next?”, he said. Unlike the BJP, the Congress seeks information from professionals and the public on formulation of policies and programmes. But the RSS and the BJP are convinced that people and professionals don’t know anything,” he said.
