Manas Dasgupta
NEW DELHI, Feb 8: Hitting back at the prime minister Narendra Modi’s incessant attack on the Congress, the party former national president Rahul Gandhi said his obsession with the Congress stem from his “fear” for the party.
Reacting to Modi’s continuous attack on the Congress during his speech in Parliament, in the Lok Sabha on Monday and in the Rajya Sabha on Tuesday with the common topic of blistering attack on the grand old party, Gandhi said the PM was scared of the Congress and was afraid of speaking the truth.
“I had raised three important issues. First, that the PM has created two Indias – an extremely rich India and one for the vast majority of people that has no hope, has unemployment and faces rising prices. Second, the PM is attacking and destroying India’s institutions and third, he is putting India at risk because he has got a bankrupt foreign policy that has allowed China and Pakistan to get together. But the PM did not address any of these issues,” Rahul said.
He added, “The gentleman [PM] doesn’t understand his job very well. He has to understand that Chinese and Pakistanis are now one, India is now facing one front, it needs to be very careful. I am advising the government to please wake up. You are asleep right now, you are ignoring the facts like the Chinese have entered Ladakh. It is very dangerous for the country.”
The PM on Monday in the Lok Sabha had blamed the Congress for the spread of Covid in the first wave. To this, Rahul Gandhi replied that he had warned the PM of the threat. “But he did not listen to me. Now, I am again warning about China and Pakistan developing closer ties. Their relationship is a threat to our nation,” he said.
Over Modi’s remark on the first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru, Rahul said, “If you [PM Modi] like abusing Congress or Nehru, be my guest. But at least do your job. The PM is scared because we speak the truth. My great grandfather served this country. He gave his entire life to the country. I don’t need a certificate from the PM for my great grandfather.”
Meanwhile, Modi also faced criticism from the opposition leaders, writers, various non-government organisations and others for attacking in the Lok Sabha those who extended a helping hand to the migrant labourers in distress. “It was shocking that in the eyes of the prime minister helping those who had been abandoned by the state is now a crime,” they said.
Modi during his address in the Lok Sabha on Monday had blamed the Congress and other opposition parties for “spreading” Covid in the country by helping out the migrant labourers stuck in various states to return home. “During the first wave, when the country was in lockdown,” Modi said, “the Congress went to Mumbai railway station to scare innocent people. They pushed labourers to go back to their states and spread coronavirus. You pushed labourers into crisis.”
He then blamed the Delhi government for “going around slums in jeeps and announcing on microphones that whoever wants to go home, buses have been arranged.” Infections, he said, then shot up in Uttar Pradesh and Punjab as a result.
Leaders of opposition parties have condemned the prime minister’s statements. “If sending migrants home was a crime then Modi seems to have forgotten his own ‘complicity in it’, for it was the Union government, after all, that ran special shramik trains to transport workers back home.
The prime minister also side-stepped the reason behind the migrant exodus — a 21-day lockdown that he himself imposed with only four hours’ notice, thus leaving lakhs of daily wagers and labourers with no choice but to try and go back to their villages and towns often walking for miles to reach their destinations with many of them meeting with their deaths on the road, they pointed out.
“The migrants didn’t want to go home, they had to, with no work and no money to or buy their food or pay their rents. Those who saw with their own eyes hundreds of thousands of migrant workers walking down the highways, desperately trying to catch a bus or a shared taxi back home to their villages will never forget the sight. Images of exhausted children draped over suitcases being pulled by parents, labourers wearing plastic bags on their feet for shoes, workers getting beaten by police and sprayed with DDT on the highways moved concerned citizens everywhere to try and help the migrants in distress as best as they could,” they pointed out.
