‘Oppn alliance will unravel over leader’
Rajnath Singh and Ram Vilas Paswan stoutly defend the govt that came under attack from Rahul Gandhi in the Lok Sabha
NEW DELHI: The proposed opposition front against the Narendra Modi government will unravel the moment the parties sit together to discuss the leadership issue, home minister Rajnath Singh predicted on Friday.
Participating in the debate on the no-confidence motion against the Modi government, Singh several questions confronted the opposition -- whether an alliance will indeed be formed, whether it will survive, who will be its leader and so on.
People compromise sometimes, Singh said. “But the alliance will unravel the moment its partners sit to decide who leads it.”
Singh said the decision to move the no-confidence motion against the Modi government was ill-conceived for two reasons. First, the government clearly has the numbers to defeat a no-trust vote. Second, people have reposed faith in the Modi government in election after election.
“We did not move no-confidence vote against the Manmohan Singh government between 2004 and 2014 because we knew the government of the day had the numbers,” he said. “We accepted the challenge because we have respect for the opposition.”
The home minister said democracy was inherent in the Indian culture, citing the example of Chandragupta Maurya, who became a king despite coming from a modest background. “Modi also became the prime minister despite being a tea seller,” Singh said. “Some people are born with a silver spoon. For them poverty is a matter of hearing, and not a matter of suffering.” Singh listed achievements of the Modi government on the economic, foreign affairs, internal security and defence fronts and lashed out at the opposition for blaming it for mob lynchings and saying it would turn India into a Hindu Pakistan -- a charge specifically made by
Congress leader Shashi Tharoor.
“The killing of Sikhs in 1984 was the biggest case of mob lynching in India,” Singh said, referring to former PM Rajiv
Gandhi’s statement that the earth shakes when a big tree falls, a comment the latter made when anti-Sikh riots broke out.