Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Tuesday lashed out at the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Aam Aadmi Party at a Delhi election rally. The national capital will go to the polls on February 8, and results will be declared three days later.
The former Congress president claimed that Prime Minister Narendra Modi was capable of selling the Taj Mahal some day. “PM Modi coined a good slogan of Make in India but did not set up a single factory in Uttar Pradesh’s Agra,” Gandhi told the crowd in New Delhi’s Jangpura locality. “He [Modi] is selling everything – Indian Oil, Air India, Hindustan Petroleum, Railways, and even the Red Fort – he might one day even sell the Taj Mahal.”
The Congress MP said the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party had no understanding of religion, and claimed no holy book spoke of violence or oppression of others. However, the saffron party was propagating religious divisiveness, he added. Gandhi said the BJP and the AAP had the sole motive of spreading hate among people.
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Gandhi criticised Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman and described her Budget speech as “hollow”, adding that it had nothing for the unemployed, or farmers. “In an interview, finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman was asked how many jobs were created? She said, ‘If I give you any number, Rahul Gandhi would go after me and say that I am lying’,” the Congress leader claimed. “The finance minister of the country is not ready to speak about job creation.”
He alleged that the government was being run by industrialists such as “[Gautam] Adani and [Mukesh] Ambani”. Gandhi claimed making a list of the projects given to Adani would “take at least 45 minutes”.
The Congress would provide jobs if the party was voted to power, Gandhi said. “If Made in India is implemented, two crore youth of the country will get a job,” he added. The Congress leader said Modi was determined to lie about jobs, make Indians fight against each other, and bring up Pakistan in his speeches. “But, he will not talk about employment because he does not have the power to provide employment and youth of India also realise this,” he added.
Congress General Secretary for Uttar Pradesh East Priyanka Gandhi also criticised Modi for failing to curb unemployment. “When PM comes to give a speech in front of you, he does not even mention of it [unemployment],” she said at a joint rally with Rahul Gandhi in Delhi’s Sangam Vihar neighbourhood. “Can he tell us whether the job losses were ‘sanyog or prayog [coincidence, or experiment]’? Can he tell us that in 35 years, the unemployment rate is the highest, ‘ye kya sanyog tha, ya prayog tha unka’?”
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