Rahul tears into Modi at Jan Akrosh rally, says he speaks lies

New Delhi : Congress President Rahul Gandhi on Sunday accused Prime Minister Narendra Modi of being “hollow” and speaking “lies” and said the “chowkidar” was silent on issues concerning judiciary, women’s safety, Dalits, youth, farmers besides corruption.

In a hard-hitting attack at Modi at the Jan Akrosh rally here, Gandhi tore into him on a range of issues including unemployment, Rafale deal, and “agenda-less” visit to China.

He said Congress will win all the assembly elections this year as well as the 2019 Lok Sabha polls.

“Four years of Modi government have given unemployment, BJP MLAs committed atrocities on women, the informal sector was destroyed, Modiji could not stand up to China,” Gandhi said.

Packing a lot of punch in his nearly 30-minute address, Gandhi said Modi keeps making promises in his speeches but people have a hard time finding the truth.

Gandhi defended senior party leader Salman Khurshid over his “blood on party’s hands” remarks, saying he would allow “divergent views to flourish in the party”, but asked partymen to fight together in the ideological battle against the RSS.

Referring to death of Judge B.H. Loya, he said people in Supreme Court had stated that pressure was being exerted on the court, but Modi was “silent” as he was on the unprecedented press conference of four judges of the Supreme Court in January.

Gandhi, who went through a mid-flight scare during his visit to poll-bound Karnataka earlier this month, announced he will visit Kailash Mansarovar after the assembly polls next month.

He accused the Prime Minister of being silent over Union Minister Piyush Goyal’s alleged sale of shares held in a privately-held company at nearly 1,000 times the face value.

“Piyush Goyal becomes a minister and does not declare his company. Later he sells it for Rs 48 crore to a power company. It is first time a Power Minister has sold his company to a power company and Narendra Modi does not speak a word,” Gandhi said.

The well-attended rally at Ramlila Maidan came almost a year before the next Lok Sabha polls and signalled Gandhi’s intention to build up electoral momentum with sharp attacks on Modi. Party leaders including UPA Chairperson Sonia Gandhi and former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh were among those present.

Gandhi said fugitive jeweller Nirav Modi had taken away Rs 30,000 crore of people’s money and fled to London but “did the chowkidar say a word about Nirav Modi”.

Citing Modi’s visit to China for an informal summit, he said: “China’s army is entrenched in Doklam, they are making helipads, extending airways and India’s Prime Minister held discussions without an agenda. What does this mean?”

None of the Prime Ministers had done such a thing but “Narendra Modi can do this”, he said.

He said Modi had talked of providing two crore jobs every year and the youth believed him, but now “unemployment is highest in the past eight years”, while demonetisation and faulty implementation of GST had “broken the back of the informal sector”.

“China creates 50,000 jobs in 24 hours while India generates 450. The youth looks towards Narendra Modi and say that he is hollow. His words are empty. He only speaks lies,” Gandhi said.

The Congress leader said that the Modi government was willing to waive Rs 2.5 lakh crore loans of a few industrialists but was not ready to do the same for farmers, who were being forced to commit suicide.

“If Congress had not stood up, all the land of farmers would have been snatched by Narendra Modi,” Gandhi said.

Noting Dalits and minorities were facing attack and Modi “does not speak a word”, he, referring to incidents of rapes in different parts of the country, said it was the first time in the country’s history that a Prime Minister was told to his face in a foreign land that his government was not doing enough to protect women.

Citing the Congress’s spirited performance in Gujarat, Gandhi said “you see what will happen in Karnataka” and also that the party will win the Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, and Chhattisgarh assembly polls and then the Lok Sabha polls in 2019.

Referring to the Rafale deal with France, Gandhi said the fighter jets were being purchased at double the rate negotiated by the Congress-led UPA government and Modi had taken away the contract away from HAL and given it to an “industralist friend.”

Gandhi said turnover of a company belonging to BJP chief Amit Shah’s son Jay Shah had risen from Rs 50,000 to Rs 80 crore in a short span of time but the “chowkidar who talks against corruption does not utter a word”.

Published on April 29, 2018 at 19:06 IST

IANS