Taking serious exceptions to Congress president Rahul Gandhi’s “chowkidar is chor” remark referring to Prime Minister Narendra Modi over the Rafale defence deal at a public rally in Kalaburagi on Monday, N. Ravikumar, State general secretary of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), has demanded that Mr. Gandhi withdraw his words considering the Supreme Court verdict in the matter.
He was addressing a press conference at the party office here on Tuesday.
“Mr. Gandhi repeatedly called the Prime Minister a ‘chor’ while alleging that there were irregularities and corruption in the Rafale deal. The fact, however, is that Mr. Gandhi is himself a ‘chor’. The Supreme Court has clearly noted that there was no corruption in the Rafale deal. If Mr. Gandhi has any respect for the Constitution and the Supreme Court, he should withdraw his aggressive comments against the Prime Minister,” he added.
Criticising Mr. Gandhi over his claims on farm loan waiver in the State, Mr. Ravikumar said that the Congress president had lied on the issue to mislead the people.
“H.D. Kumaraswamy had promised that he would within 24 hours of assuming power in the State waive farm loan worth ₹ 48,000 crore borrowed by farmers from nationalised banks and cooperative societies. After assuming power, he put forth a pretext that his party did not have a majority in the Assembly. Then, he said that he would fulfil his promise within three months. But, the fact is that the complete farm loan waiver still remains a promise alone. Of the ₹ 48,000 crore, only ₹ 4,600 crore has been waived. Yet, Mr. Gandhi claims that the government has waived farm loan,” he said.
Mr. Ravikumar said that the Pradhan Mantri Kisan Samman Nidhi Yojna, under which every small and marginal farmer is entitled to ₹ 6,000 a year, has come as a great relief to the farming community.
“Farm loans were waived only once in the 10 years of the UPA [United Progressive Alliance] rule which spent about ₹ 52,000 crore. But, the Modi government is going to spend ₹ 75,000 crore every year [under the Prime Minister Kisan Samman Nidhi],” he said.
To a question, Mr. Ravikumar said that Umesh Jadhav, elected on Congress ticket from Chincholi and who subsequently submitted his resignation to his membership of the Assembly, would be fielded against M. Mallikarjun Kharge in Kalaburagi constituency in the Lok Sabha election.
“We feel that both the Congress and the Janata Dal(S) are pressuring Speaker Ramesh Kumar not to accept the resignation of Mr. Jadhav. Our senior lawyers have said that Mr. Jadhav can contest even if his resignation is not accepted,” he said.
Party leaders B.G. Patil, Doddappagowda Patil Naribol, Dattatreya Patil Revoor, Subhash Guttedar, Shashil G. Namoshi and others were present.
