Alleging that the money for farm loan waivers promised by the Narendra Modi government was being diverted towards corporate tax exemptions, Congress MP Rahul Gandhi on Tuesday dubbed Prime Minister Modi as the “loudspeaker” of certain billionaire industrialists like Ambani and Adani.
Likening the Prime Minister to a ‘pickpocket’ who diverted his victim’s attention before stealthily pocketing his purse, Mr. Gandhi accused Mr. Modi of similarly diverting the public’s attention while handing over the country to a handful of wealthy industrialists.
“Who runs the economy? Not an Ambani or an Adani, but farmers, labourers, small traders. The Goods and Services Tax (GST) has broken the back of these people,” said Mr. Gandhi, in public addresses in Yavatmal and Wardha districts.
He further warned that the government was out to privatise national assets like ports and Public Sector Undertakings (PSUs) and that the prevailing joblessness in the country would worsen in the coming six months while the unemployment rate would double.
“The BJP government waived off corporate tax worth ₹1.25 lakh crore in a single day. In the last five years, it has exempted a staggering 5.5 lakh crore in tax for a handful of industrialists… He [Mr. Modi] has privatised coal mines, and is going to privatise all public sector companies like HAL while giving all your [the public’s] money to 15-20 industrialists,” he charged.
Mr. Gandhi said that when the Congress-led UPA government ran the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS), the aim was to directly transfer money into the bank accounts of the poorest of the poor.
“It took us ₹35,000 crore a year to run this project and it was responsible for boosting India’s economy, which surged ahead between 2005 and 2010. It empowered economically backward people by improving their purchasing power which in turn helped bolster the economy,” he said, stating that the Modi government had done away with the rural job scheme, weakened the land acquisition bill and diluted the Adivasi Bill.
Remarking that the media was being controlled by wealthy industrialists, Mr. Gandhi said the Prime Minister left a trail of hollow promises wherever he went, while diverting attention from critical issues by talking about Article 370 or lunar missions.
“The PM will not speak a word on unemployment. He said that farm loans would be waived off in Maharashtra? But has that happened?” he said.
Lambasting the Prime Minister’s allegedly false promises, Mr. Gandhi said: “At the time of the recently concluded Lok Sabha polls, Modi had promised that ₹6000 would be put in every bank account of farmers... In the Lok Sabha polls prior to that, he had promised that ₹15 lakh would be deposited in the bank accounts of the poor from the money retrieved by economic offenders. But has anyone received these amounts?”
Referring to Defence Minister Rajnath Singh’s recent visit to France, he took jibes at the latter’s ‘shashtra puja’(worship of weapons) on a Rafale fighter jet.
“The media cannot write the truth about the Rafale deal and the fact ₹35,000 crore was siphoned off as it is being controlled by industrialists,” he said, while alleging that the media was only being used to publicise Mr. Modi.
