Rahul Gandhi launches blistering attack on Modi-Shah, compares BJP-RSS to Kauravas

People will accept a man accused of murder as president of the BJP but they will never accept such a man as president of the Congress, quipped Congress president Rahul Gandhi on Sunday. Saying that India expects much more and higher standards from the Indian National Congress, the Congress president compared the RSS-BJP combine with the Kauravas from Mahabharata.

BJP, he asserted, is the name of an organisation, an organisation designed to fight for power and win elections. The RSS is an organisation that wants to systematically destroy all institutions in India and wants the entire country to be under them. Congress on the other hand respects institutions like Parliament, media and the judiciary and would always fight to protect them. “India will never allow us to behave like the RSS and the BJP”.

Let nobody forget that when Mahatma Gandhi and other Congress leaders were sleeping on the floor of British prisons, ‘their leader’ Savarkar was busy drafting a mercy petition to the British, the Congress president added. In Punjab alone, he claimed, 15,000 Congressmen and women had laid down their lives for the country.

In a stinging, direct and even brutal frontal attack on RSS, BJP and Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Congress president Rahul Gandhi in his concluding address to the Congress plenary session did not mince his words. Mocking the Prime Minister, he declared that while he and other Congress leaders were human beings and did make mistakes, PM Modi appears to believe that he is an incarnation of God Bhagwan ka Avtar) and cannot make any mistake.

“Had Congress made a mistake like demonetisation, you could trust Dr Manmohan Singh to admit that this was a mistake; but you will never hear PM Modi admit that it was a mistake,” he went on to add.

FASTEST GROWING ECONOMY?

Ridiculing the Prime Minister and BJP’s oft-repeated claim that India is today the fastest growing economy in the world, the Congress president dared people to go out and ask the youth in any city what they are engaged in. The answer, he suggested, would invariably be ‘nothing’. Millions of youth are jobless and are hopelessly looking for employment but the PM and his finance minister boast of fastest growth in the world, he exclaimed.

“Visit any shop and look up any fancy product, you will find it is made in China. China is everywhere—in shops, in Doklam, in Nepal, in Maldives…if you are rich , you can make more millions by selling Chinese goods while the Finance Minister and his daughter work for crony capitalists,” he asserted.

The vast majority of Indian youth had placed their faith in Narendra Modi four years ago, the Congress president acknowledged. But their faith has been shaken and the PM has gone silent on his promises. In order to divert attention, Rahul Gandhi suggested, the PM has been jumping from one issue to another to create a world of imagination—Modi’s Maya— in which the youth could dream of having Rs 15 lakh in their bank accounts and live in Swachh Bharat.

The Congress, he said, will never work for the rich and the powerful and nothing will stop the party from speaking up for the poor.

ON THE MEDIA, JUDICIARY, INTELLECTUALS AND THE ATMOSPHERE OF FEAR

“People from press are scared, for the first time we saw four SC judges running to public for justice. They told Gauri Lankesh and Kalburgi, ‘question us and you will die’. They tell our honest businessman to shut up and allow corrupt officers to extort their hard earned money. They tell our farmers to work for nothing. There is a difference between RSS and Congress. We respect the country’s institutions whereas they want to finish them,” the Congress president said in the presence of a multitude of mediapersons.

UPA II LET PEOPLE DOWN:

Admitting that in the last few years of UPA II, the Central government and the Congress failed the people, Rahul Gandhi reminded the session that the country once again was passing through a critical period. Farmers and youth, who had put their faith in Narendra Modi and the BJP four years ago, were in distress and looking up to the Congress for an alternative.

Declaring that only one organisation, the Indian National Congress, could steer the country through these tough times, the Congress president cautioned that the party would have to change first before changing the country. As Congress president, his first task would be to break the wall between party workers and leaders, he asserted to applause from the audience.

Spelling out his strategy, he said that in Gujarat Assembly election, he had ensured that honest and gifted party workers got tickets to contest the election and not the moneybags or people who are ‘seniors’ or outsiders. His endeavour would be to end the culture of sending candidates parachuted into constituencies.

Pointing to the stage where he alone was occupying to deliver his address, unlike in the past when senior leaders would occupy the stage, the Congress president asserted that he had vacated the stage for the youth, the workers and the talented. His dream is to revive the party to pre-Independence days when any one of the scores of Congress leaders could have led the country.