Hitting back at Prime Minister Narendra Modi for his “personal attacks” on him, Congress president Rahul Gandhi asked him to instead speak on governance and development issues.
At a public rally here on Thursday, Mr. Gandhi said the way Mr. Modi spoke from public platforms was unbecoming of the Prime Minister of a country. He said Mr. Modi was resorting to personal attacks as he had nothing to say in response to the questions he had raised on his governance.
“I had asked a couple of questions. Since Mr. Modi gives lengthy speeches on corruption, I had first asked him why his party chose B.S. Yeddyurappa, the man who went to jail on corruption charges, as its chief ministerial candidate for Karnataka. Secondly, I had asked him why he allowed Nirav Modi to escape with ₹30,000 crore public money, the amount equal to what the previous UPA government annually spent for providing work to rural labourers under MNREGA. I had asked him how his friend Amit Shah’s son Jay Shah multiplied ₹50,000 to make it ₹80 crore in a year. He is choosing to ridicule me with personal attacks because he has no answers to my questions,” he said.
“Let him [Mr. Modi] attack as much as he wants. It doesn’t make any difference to me. As a responsible citizen of India, I don’t counter my Prime Minister in the same way that he does. I don’t personally attack him. But, I continue to ask him questions. This is the difference between me and him,” Mr. Gandhi said.
He said Mr. Modi did not have anything to criticise the Siddaramaiah government with either. “The Siddaramaiah government has given free education to children. It has distributed free rice to the poor to mitigate their hunger. It has improved the infrastructure in such a way that even BJP president Amit Shah accepted it once. Since Mr. Modi has no issues to attack the Siddaramaiah government, he resorts to personal attacks,” he said.
“Talk about your pre-poll promises. Talk about your assurance of bringing back black money from abroad and depositing ₹15 lakh in the accounts of every citizen. Tell people of Karnataka what kind of governance you would give if you come to power ... Talking only about me without uttering a word about these issues doesn’t help you much,” he told Mr. Modi.
Terming the Union government anti-farmer, Mr. Gandhi said Mr. Modi did not utter a word when waiver of farm loans taken from nationalised banks was demanded.
“Mr. Modi did not waive farmers’ loans. But he did write off around ₹2.5 lakh crore corporate loans borrowed by 15 richest businessmen. When I asked Mr. Siddaramaiah whether he could waive farmers’ loans taken by cooperative institutions, he waived them within 10 days. There is no place for the poor in the BJP’s heart,” he said.
