Vijayapura/Ballari (Karnataka): Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Friday took potshots at Prime Minister Narendra Modi over his attack on the grand old party, saying he is scared and may even shed tears on the stage.
He called the BJP ‘Bharatiya Chombu Party’. Chombu in Kannada means round water pot, which is sometimes used to convey emptiness and deception.
“You have heard the prime minister’s speeches. He is scared. It’s possible that he may shed tears on stage,” Gandhi said, addressing public meetings in the district headquarters towns of Vijayapura and Ballari in the party-governed state.
Modi has targeted the Congress on a variety of issues in recent campaign rallies, including “mangalsutra”, “redistribution of wealth” and “inheritance tax” charges.
The former Congress chief accused Modi of ‘diverting public attention’ through various means. “Sometimes he talks about China and Pakistan, and sometimes he will make you beat plates and ask you to switch on the torch light of your mobile phones.”
He pointed out that there are three to four core issues in India including poverty, unemployment and price rise, and claimed that only Congress can eradicate unemployment, contain price rise and give people their due share.
“Modi has only snatched money from poor people. He has made some billionaires. There are 22 people who have wealth equivalent to the 70 crore people of the country. Just one per cent people are controlling 40 per cent of the wealth of the nation,” Gandhi alleged.
The Congress leader said in the present scheme of things, there is “no scope” for Dalits, OBCs, tribals, minorities and poor general category people.
“I will just tell you a clear thing in a simple one line. The wealth Modi has given to those billionaires, the same money we are going to give to the poor people of the country,” he said.
Gandhi also promised the youth that his party will scrap the ‘Agniveer’ scheme if it is voted to power. He dubbed the scheme in the armed forces offering three years services to the youth from 18 years to 21 years as an insult to the Army and soldiers.
“Narendra Modi snatched the Army jobs from the youth of India. He brought the Agniveer scheme, which is an insult to the Indian Army and soldiers. We will scrap it,” he said.
The Congress leader charged Modi with imposing a faulty GST where he introduced five different types of tax, which are hefty.
Alleging that the prime minister was doing injustice to Karnataka, he said the Congress will change the GST and rectify the injustice meted out to the people of the state.
According to Gandhi, the ongoing Lok Sabha elections was not general in nature. “It is not an election that used to happen earlier because for the first time in the history of India, a party and a person want to destroy the Constitution and democracy.”
Taking a dig at the BJP, he said: “I will tell you what the BJP is going to do. It’s Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Chombu Party which is empty. For every Rs 100 it (Karnataka) gives to the country (as GST), it gets only Rs 13 in return (under tax devolution).”
“Karnataka was supposed to get about Rs 18,000 crore for drought relief, but it got ‘Chombu’. The Finance Commission did not give Rs 60,000 crore. Only Chombu was given,” the Congress leader said.
He also said unemployment had spread under the Modi government “just like COVID-19.”
“When Corona had come he (Modi) had asked people to beat plates and utensils. When youths asked the prime minister for jobs, he asked them to make Pakoras,” Gandhi said.
