Manas Dasgupta
NEW DELHI, Aug 11: The Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Friday lambasted the prime minister Narendra Modi who spent most of his two hours reply to the no-confidence motion in the Lok Sabha on Thursday only in attacking the opposition and said it did not behove a Prime Minister to laugh and crack jokes in Parliament when Manipur was burning for the past four months.
A day after Modi’s long speech replying to the motion which the opposition brought specifically on the Manipur situation, Gandhi said the prime minister instead of addressing the violence and deaths in Manipur, was cracking jokes and laughing in Parliament as NDA members indulged in sloganeering.
“I watched the Prime Minister yesterday, speaking for two hours, laughing, joking, and raising slogans in Parliament. The Prime Minister would say one line and the BJP (leaders) would shout another slogan. The Prime Minister seems to have forgotten that the state of Manipur is on fire and has been on fire for four months,” the former Congress leader said. He said it does not behove the Prime Minister that when there is violence in the country, he indulges in “making fun for two hours”.
Gandhi asserted that if Modi wanted to stop the violence, there were tools in the hands of the government that could stop it immediately. “Women and children are dying over there, women are being molested and raped and the Prime Minister of India is sitting in the middle of Parliament and laughing. This is not about Rahul Gandhi, it is not about the Congress, it is not about opposition, it is about India, it is about our country. A state has been decimated, it does not exist anymore and it has happened because of the politics of the BJP — divide and rule and burn,” Gandhi said.
Mr Gandhi’s strong attack came a day after PM Modi slammed the opposition in his over two-hour reply to the motion of no-confidence against his government in Lok Sabha. Mr Gandhi said his remarks that Prime Minister Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah had “murdered Bharat Mata in Manipur” were not hollow words as he had for the first time in his 19 years in politics been told in a state that if he takes a person from one community in his security detail to the area of another community, they will shoot that security personnel.
“I have been in politics for the last 19 years. I have been to all states. But have not seen what we witnessed in Manipur. Perhaps, I should say it now. When I went to the Meitei area, we were told not to bring any Kuki as part of our security. We were told that Kukis would be killed if there is any Kuki in the Meitei area. And a similar was the situation in the Kuki area. So, Manipur has been divided into Kuki and Meitei. Manipur does not exist as a state. This is what I said in Parliament,” the senior Congress leader added.
He said the central security personnel told him in Manipur that they had never seen anything like what was happening in Manipur. “That is why I said the idea of India has been murdered by the BJP in Manipur. I was not speaking metaphorically, I was speaking literally,” the former Congress chief said.
“That is why in my speech (in Lok Sabha) I said Bharat Mata has been murdered in Manipur. For the first time, the words Bharat Mata have been expunged from Parliament. It is an insult to those words. What is it that I have said is wrong? I have said Bharat Mata, which is the idea of India, where everybody lives peacefully, harmoniously and with affection, has been killed in Manipur, it is a fact,” Gandhi said.
Manipur no longer exists as a state because the state requires control and authority which have disappeared from there, he said. It would take the Indian Army two days to put an end to the “nonsense” going on there, Gandhi said.
“I have full faith in the Indian army, every Indian knows that if the Indian Army is told to put an end to this (violence), it will stop immediately. There are reasons for the PM not being able to go to Manipur. I don’t want to speak about them publicly,” the Congress leader said.
He claimed that the Prime Minister “ridiculed” the state and the women there in his address in the Lok Sabha. Mr Gandhi asserted that when a person becomes the Prime Minister, he ceases to be a politician and should become the representative of the voice of the people.
“The politics should be put aside and the Prime Minister should not speak as a petty politician, as the leader of a political party, but he should speak with the weight of the Indian people behind him. It is tragic to watch Narendra Modi, it is sad because the Prime Minister does not understand what he actually is,” Gandhi said.
“He is our representative, he is my representative and watching the Prime Minister spend two hours talking about the Congress, talking about the opposition, making ridiculous remarks about the name (of the opposition alliance), this really does not do justice to an Indian Prime Minister,” he said.
“I have seen prime ministers from the Congress, the BJP. I have seen Mr (Atal Bihari) Vajpayee, and I have seen Mr Deve Gowda. There is a complete misunderstanding in the mind of Narendra Modi ji about what the PM of India is,” he said. Mr Gandhi reiterated his assertion that “Hindustan has been murdered by BJP in Manipur.”
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