Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi on Monday questioned Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s “silence” on a media report alleging that a company owned by the son of BJP president Amit Shah saw a staggering increase in turnover after the party came to power at the Centre.
On Day Two of his three-day ''yatra'' in poll-bound Gujarat, Mr. Gandhi accused the National Democratic Alliance government of promoting crony capitalism. “When it comes to helping, they help only a handful of their industrialists. For 10 to 12 years, Amit Shah’s son’s company had nothing. Its fortunes changed and it started earning only after 2014,” he said during an interaction with party workers and the public at Nadiad in central Gujarat.
‘Dramatic rise’
“It’s a strange world here! Jay Shah started with ₹50,000 and then it dramatically jumped to ₹80 crore. This is Modi ji ’s ‘Start-up India’, ‘Make in India’,” he said.
Recalling Mr. Modi’s assertion in the 2014 Lok Sabha election campaign that he would neither indulge in corruption nor allow anyone to be corrupt, he said: “Now when Amit Shah’s son’s company has grown 16,000 times, Modi ji has gone silent.”
Referring to the NDA government's handling of the economy, he said, “Now admit that you have failed. You had promised jobs ... Where are those jobs?” to loud cries of “no jobs anywhere” from the audience.
Mr. Gandhi will next travel to central Gujarat areas of Kheda, Anand, Vadodara and Godhara.
On Monday, he visited Nadiad’s historical Santram temple and paid tributes to Sardar Patel at his birth place, Karamsad.
