Thiruvananthapuram: Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi on Wednesday alleged that a 'superficial' Prime Minister Narendra Modi leads the 'poisonous campaign' of dividing the Hindus and Muslims during the assembly polls.
Gandhi, who was addressing the executive meeting of the Kerala Pradesh Congress Committee, said the BJP always has two campaigns in place during the elections - a campaign of growth and another a 'poisonous' campaign.
"The main aim of Narendra Modi and the RSS and the way they win elections is to divide Hindus and Muslims. Whether it is in Bihar, whether it is in UP, and now whether it is in Assam, to an extent in this state, in Bengal, that is the central idea that they bring to the table," he said. "Wherever they go, there are two campaigns. There is one campaign that everybody sees, which is the development campaign. And then there is another campaign that is underground, which is the poisonous campaign. The Congress party is standing up to this challenge and is defeating the BJP," he added.
He said that his party realised what the BJP was trying to do and thus got 'Nitish ji, Lalu ji and the Congress together'. "We defeated the BJP soundly in Bihar and they were stunned by the results," he said.
Firing fresh salvos at Prime Minister Modi, Gandhi recounted the former's address in the Parliament where he criticised the MGNREGA programme calling it 'useless' and 'hollow'.
"Prime Minister Modi in the Parliament said that MGNREGA is a useless programme. NREGA is a hollow programme. And the only reason that I am not shutting down NREGA is because I want the country to know the mistakes of the Congress party. When they analysed NREGA, they realised that the biggest reason of the growth in the rural area was because of this programme," he said.
"On one side you have the Prime Minister saying that NREGA is a useless programme, and on the other hand you have the Finance Minister and all the other bureaucrats saying that NREGA is a good programme," he added.
Adding another example to highlight the 'superficial' nature of the Prime Minister, Gandhi raked up the issue of the Naga Accord.
"When Prime Minister called the Congress president for the first time, he told her that he has done a historic job by signing the Naga Accord. The Congress president called me up worried because we know the complexities of the accord. We know that there is a land issue with Manipur, there is a land issue with Arunachal Pradesh, we know that it is a very complicated accord. She asked me to call up the chief ministers and find out what have they done," he narrated.
He further said, "So I called up the Chief Ministers of Arunachal, Manipur and Assam. And they told me that they didn't know what the government was talking about. And then these chief ministers called the chief minister of Nagaland and he said that he did not know what was going on. The chief ministers then called the Home Minister. Even he was clueless. And then we find out that there was no accord. The Prime Minster doesn't know what was going on. There is superficiality in the way he views the government," he said.
