Rahul tells party to tap into ‘rising anger’ against govt
NEW DELHI: Congress president Rahul Gandhi’s attack on Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his National Democratic Alliance took a metaphorical turn on Tuesday as he said that the “magical train” promised to people in 2014 is being “driven to disaster by an autocratic, incompetent and arrogant” driver.
“The people of India are demanding change. They will no longer be fooled by your (Modi’s) magical train that is headed for a bad accident,” he said, addressing a meeting of the Congress Parliamentary Party (CPP).
Gandhi called upon party leaders and workers to tap the “rising tide of anger” against the Bharatiya Janata Party (Bjp)-led government and work very hard to give the people an alternative to Modi’s “achche din (good days) bogus” promise.
Reacting to Gandhi’s remarks, Anil Baluni, Rajya Sabha member and the BJP’S media cell in-charge, said: “People of this country gave us licence to run this train on the tracks of development. We are amused to see Rahul Gandhi talks about accidents, when he doesn’t hold any licence to even run the train. He doesn’t enjoy the confidence of his party, the proposed grand alliance partners do not accept him as PM candidate, and people do not have faith in him.”
“In 2014, Modiji said India had been a slow ‘passenger train’ for 70 years and now under his rule the country will become a sleek and shining ‘magical train’ which is destined for ‘achhe din’. Give me your votes, said Modiji, and ‘I will take you on the best and most comfortable journey of your life’,” Gandhi said.
“Four years of Modi rule later, sadly, India today looks more like a train that is being driven to disaster by an autocratic, incompetent and arrogant driver, who does not care what happens to passengers he is responsible for,” the Congress chief added.
With less than a year remaining for the Lok Sabha elections, Gandhi has sharpened his attacks on Modi and the BJP and projected himself as the main challenger to the Prime Minister. The debate over the no-confidence motion in the Lok Sabha on July 20 saw Gandhi taking on Modi in an aggressive speech.
However, the Congress has maintained that the Opposition’s Prime Ministerial candidate will be decided after the polls, arguing that the issue is divisive and could derail the unity efforts at a time when all the non-national Democratic Alliance parties are coming together on one platform to defeat the BJP. Gandhi chaired the meeting in absence of former Congress president and CPP chairperson Sonia Gandhi.
“We are meeting here today at a time when the crisis of governance in India under the Narendra Modi government — marked by corruption, total economic failure, incompetence and spread of social divisiveness — is at its peak,” he said. Such aggressive language is only to be expected, one expert said. “We will see a lot more aggression from the political parties and their leaders now. The campaign for 2019 is warming up. Rhetoric, semantics and slogans have taken over the old model of campaigning. Positioning in the media is very important nowadays and hence we will see escalation in war of words between the two sides in the coming days,” said Delhi-based political analyst N Bhaskara Rao. Gandhi said people were looking to the Congress and its allied parties to help remove the Modi government and replace it with one that will listen to them, understand their problems and provide solutions that reduce poverty, unemployment and inequality in the country. “There is a great responsibility that is being placed on all of us today, to win this historic struggle between the forces of democracy and social justice versus those of autocracy and social hierarchy,” Gandhi told the Congress MPS. “We have to ensure that the forces of hate, division and violence that are trampling upon the Constitution are prevented from coming back to power,” he said.
Raising the issue of safety of women and children, Gandhi said, “Reports of mass rape of little girls in Muzaffarpur, Bihar are horrifying. Lawmakers and leaders of BJP and NDA are protecting the culprits.” The Congress chief kept up the attack on Modi over the Rafale deal, calling it “corruption of the century” and criticised the BJP governments at the Centre and in Assam over the issue of National Register of Citizens, accusing them of carrying out a “tardy” execution of the critical and highly sensitive exercise.
Gandhi also launched a blistering attack on the government over the flight abroad of businessmen Vijay Mallya, Nirav Modi and Mehul Choksi who are wanted for financial misdemeanours in India.