New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi slammed Congress throughout his reply to the motion of thanks on the President’s Address in Lok Sabha on Monday. Here are some of the salvos the PM fired at the grand old party"
- Congress "crossed limits" and "committed a sin" with the kind of political moves it tried to pull off during the pandemic. "During the first wave of COVID19, you (Congress) gave free train tickets to migrant workers to leave Mumbai. Delhi government told migrant workers to leave the city and provided them buses intending to promote Covid spread rapidly in Punjab, UP and Uttarakhand," the PM said.
- PM Modi claimed that none of the states that brought Congress to power has truly accepted the party. "Nagaland voted for Congress 24 years ago, Odisha voted for you 27 years ago, you also won with full majority in Goa 28 years ago. In 1988, Tripura also voted for Congress. West Bengal voted for Congress in 1972. You even take credit for the creation of Telangana but the public did not accept you in any of the states," he said.
- Highlighting how the Congress high command has been living in palaces for most of their lives, Modi said that they have no concerns for the farmers of India. "We need to strengthen our small farmers. Our focus is on them. But those who don't know the pain of small farmers, who have been living in palaces for a long time, don't have any right to do politics in their name," he added.
- Congress' opposition to Make in India was one of the things the PM highlighted. "Some people have a problem with 'Make in India' because, for them, it means that there will be no corruption, they won't be able to gather money. If we are talking about being vocal for local, are we not fulfilling the dreams of Mahatma Gandhi? Then, why was it being mocked by the opposition despite them being followers of Gandhi?”
- Taking a dig at Jawaharlal Nehru multiple times, PM Modi claimed that in his speech at the Lal Qila during his tenure as the first PM of India, Nehru had blamed Korea and the US for inflation in India. "It is shameful that the first PM of India blamed his economic failure on other countries at the Red Fort. We don't do this - we take responsibility of what we do."
- PM accused Congress of following the 'Divide and Rule' policy to execute their agenda and called them the leader of 'Tukde Tukde' gang. "The Congress has become the head of the 'Tukde Tukde gang' today. They are trying to divide the nation based on religious lines. The British left, but left their ideology of divide and rule with them(Congress)" he claims.
- Quoting Nehru yet again, he remembered that Nehru had said 'Bengali, Marathi, Gujarati, Tamil, Andhra, Oriya, Assamese, Kannada, Malayali, Sindhi, Punjabi, Hindustani... for hundreds of years, have made their own identity.' This was in response to Rahul Gandhi, who had last week said the Constitution does not refer to India as a nation but as a "Union of States" and that the BJP and its ideological mentor Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh are "playing with the foundation of the country".
- Underlining the Congress slogans of 'Garibi Hatao' used since 1971, Modi said that the poor in India are not traitors and that only support a government that works for them. "Your bad days arrived because you thought you'll use slogans and win them over. But they have woken up. They will never vote for you again" he said. He further remarked that Congress seems to have made its mind to stay out of power for the next 100 years in India. "If you are willing to stay out of power, I am ready too," he remarked.
- The PM further accused the Congress of being overly and unnecessarily critical of everything the government does. "We believe that criticism is an essential part of democracy. But, blind opposition to everything is never the way ahead. It is in fact an insult to the democracy,” he said.
- The PM said that the opposition has failed to acknowledge the progress the nation has made on a global level. "The entire world praises Yoga. It's importance has rather increased world wide during the pandemic. But the opposition goes on mocking it. It is something we should be proud of as a country. But the opposition is busy demeaning it," he added. He also accused the government of still being stuck in 2014.
