BENGALURU: “The Prime Minister sees a threat in me.” That’s how Congress president Rahul Gandhi summed up the aggressive reaction of Prime Minister Narendra Modi to his own PM ambitions as the curtains came down on a no-holds barred election campaign for the May 12 Karnataka Assembly polls, on Thursday. On Wednesday, Mr Modi had remarked that Mr Gandhi’s ambition to become PM ‘reeks of arrogance.’
Addressing a news conference with CM Siddaramaiah and veteran leader Mallikarjun Kharge by his side, Mr Gandhi who led the party’s campaign to retain power with repeated visits to the state, said, “Mr Modi has anger inside him and he has got anger for everybody not only for me. I attract that anger because he sees a threat in me. His anger is his problem, not my problem. I have now learned to deal with him. When he realises that he is coming into a space where there is no escape, then he distracts and creates anger. This election is not about Rahul. We will not let him distract and create anger.”
He lambasted Mr Modi for raking up the issue of Sonia Gandhi’s foreign origin, saying “My mother is an Italian. She has lived the larger part of her life in India. She is more Indian than many, many Indians I have seen. She has sacrificed her life for the country, she has suffered for the country. When Mr Modi makes such comments, it shows the quality of the man.”
The Congress president also sought to turn the tables on the top brass of BJP by mocking at them over the fact that an army of senior leaders, including a couple of Union ministers and CMs, descended on the state on the last day for campaigning as the party was in a state of “panic” over the Congress adopting a different approach to win over voters. Mr Modi had also remained silent on the issue of attack on Dalits and the presence of Reddy brothers and their associates in the fray despite their involvement in the mega-buck illegal mining scam, he added.
Maintaining that BJP leaders feel “uncomfortable” about his temple visits, Mr Gandhi said, “I don’t think they understand the term Hindu, because the term Hindu is a perspective, it is something that is in the heart, it is imbibed. “There are different beliefs....as a leader of a political party it is my job to stand with them in their beliefs,” he said.
The Congress president claimed India’s foreign policy was “decimated” as the Prime Minister looked at it as an individual exercise. “He is under the impression that he can go on and have a conversation with the President of China and everything will magically happen,” he said adding that Modi needs to take into confidence talented people in the foreign ministry. “Are discussions happening with finance, foreign and defence minister on strategies? No. It’s a one man show,” he said.
