Congress President Rahul Gandhi on Thursday blamed both the Bharatiya Janata Party-Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh combine and Kerala’s ruling Communist Party of India (Marxist) of using violence, and said his party believed in non-violence. Gandhi was speaking at a rally in Kerala’s Kozhikode.
“In a way, both the BJP-RSS and the CPI(M) use violence,” Gandhi said. “Violence is the weapon of the weak. The Congress has always fought violence with non-violence.”
The Congress president attacked the Bharatiya Janata Party-led central government on several issues. He reiterated his claim that Prime Minister Narendra Modi was “shooting for a film” soon after the terror attack in Pulwama on February 14.
“The person who imposes his ‘Mann ki Baat’ on the country is attacking our institutions, one by one,” he said, referring to Modi. He criticised the decision to demonetise high-value currency notes in 2016, and said Modi had not “bothered to seek the Reserve Bank of India’s suggestion” before it.
Gandhi also repeated his party’s promise to provide a minimum income to the poor if it comes to power in the General Elections. He had first made such a promise in January.
“Farmers asked for farm loan waivers, Modi and Arun Jaitley laughed at them,” Gandhi said, according to The Indian Express. “He calls Nirav Modi, Mehul Choksi and Anil Ambani as ‘bhai’ [brother], so they’re his brothers. But he does not call the farmers of the country ‘bhai’.”
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