AURAD: Congress president Rahul Gandhi on Thursday took exception to the personal attacks launched against him by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and said the PM was belittling his position by engaging in such attacks.
Addressing a public gathering here on Thursday, Mr Gandhi alleged that the PM was resorting to personal attacks as he had nothing to speak about the development issues which he (Rahul) had raised.
“Since Modi gives lengthy speeches on corruption, I had first asked him why his party had chosen Mr B.S. Yeddyurappa, the man who went to jail on corruption charges, as its CM candidate for Karnataka”.
“Secondly, I had asked him why he allowed (diamantaire) Nirav Modi to escape with Rs 30,000 crore of public money, the amount equal to that the previous Congress led UPA government annually spent for providing work to rural labourers under MNREGA”.
“Thirdly, I had asked him how his friend Amit Shah’s son Jay Shah multiplied Rs.50,000 to make it Rs 80 crore in a year. Since he did not have answers to these questions, he chose to ridicule me with personal attacks,” he said.
Asserting that Mr Modi’s personal attacks would have little effect on him, Mr Gandhi declared that he would continue to raise questions about development issues. Claiming that the Siddaramaiah-led government in the state had fulfilled 90% of the promises made by the Congress in the last assembly elections, Mr. Gandhi said that none of the promises made by the BJP during the last Lok Sabha elections were fulfilled.
“Talk about your pre-poll promises. Talk about your assurance of bringing black money from abroad and depositing Rs. 15 lakh in the accounts of every citizen. Tell people of Karnataka what kind of governance you will give if come to power... Talking only about me without uttering a word about these issues won’t help you much,” the Congress president told the PM.
While comparing the performance of the governments led by Mr Modi and Mr Siddaramaiah, Mr Gandhi repeatedly quoted from the Vachana composition of 12th-century social reformer Basavanna, “Nudidante Nade [do as you say].”
Terming the Union government anti-farmer, he said Mr Modi did not utter a word when the Congress demanded waiver of farm loans borrowed from nationalised banks. “Modi did not respond to questions on waiver of farm loans but wrote off around Rs. 2.5 lakh crore of corporate loans borrowed by 15 richest businessmen.
On the contrary when I asked Mr Siddaramaiah whether he could waive farmer loans borrowed by cooperative institutions, he waived them within 10 days. There is no place for the poor in the BJP’s heart,” he said.
