IN a blistering attack on the Congress Monday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi called it the “leader of the tukde tukde gang,” which had inherited the divide-and-rule policy of the British and was using its irrelevance and rejection to play the spoiler and spread despair.
Modi, however, remained silent on the issue of Chinese incursions in border areas, souring of Centre-state relations and the ideological approach for which his government had come under criticism from the Opposition during the debate.
“Vibhajankari maansikta unke DNA me ghus gayi hai. Angrez chale gaye lekin baanto aur raj karo – ye neeti Congress ne apna charitra bana liya hai. Isliye hi aaj Congress tukde tukde gang ki leader ban gayi hai (The divisive mentality has entered their DNA. The British have left but the policy of divide-and-rule has been adopted by the Congress. Therefore, Congress has become the leader of the tukde-tukde gang today),” he said to applause from the Treasury benches.
Speaking in the Lok Sabha. Watch https://t.co/WfOOasml0G
— Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) February 7, 2022
Responding to allegations raised by Congress leader Rahul Gandhi in his speech, Modi said – without naming Gandhi – that the Congress, rejected in state after state, has lost the “appetite for power” and is sowing seeds of separatism.
This was an apparent reference to Gandhi’s remark that the Centre had stopped listening to states and its vision was that of a “king” with a stick.
Modi said the Congress’s “game plan” has been exposed during the last seven years. He listed its electoral debacles to underline that the Congress had been out of the political structures in several states for decades: it last came to power in Nagaland in 1998, Odisha in 1995, Goa with a full majority in 1994, Tripura in 1988, West Bengal in 1972, Tamil Nadu in 1962 and in states like Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Gujarat in 1985.
“With their statements, their programmes, their misdeeds, the way you (Congress) speak and connect with issues,” Modi said, “it seems you have made up your mind of not coming back to power for 100 years.”
Accusing the Congress of indulging in “blind opposition,” he said: “Aalochna jivant loktantra ka aabhushan hai… andhvirodh loktantra ka anaadar hai. (Criticism is the ornament of a vibrant democracy… Blind opposition is disrespect to democracy).”
Modi, often accused by the Opposition for not acknowledging Jawaharlal Nehru, referred to that and invoked the first prime minister several times to take a swipe at the Congress.
With Gandhi and a number of Opposition leaders flagging price rise, Modi quoted Nehru’s Independence Day speech in 1951. “Pandit Nehru said from the Red Fort, ‘the war in Korea is affecting us. That is why prices increase and they go out of our control’. Just think how big it was an issue that Nehruji had to throw his hands up in the air from Red Fort,” he said amid Congress protests.
“You complain, I don’t take Pandit ji’s name. Today I will keep saying Nehruji — enjoy…,” he said.
On price rise, he took a swipe at former Finance Minister P Chidambaram too. “Someone is writing articles on economy in the newspapers these days. In 2012, he said the public isn’t troubled when they spend Rs 15 on a water bottle and Rs 20 on ice cream but the public can’t tolerate when there’s a one-rupee increase in prices of wheat and rice. Such insensitivity, these were the kind of statements made by leaders then,” he said.
Although a number of Opposition members attacked the government during the debate, Modi limited his attack to the Congress. He singled out Rahul Gandhi’s speech without taking his name. To a protesting Chowdhury, he said: “Kuch log bolkar chaley jaatey hain, jhelna in jaison ko padta hai” (Some people speak and go away and people like you have to face the brunt.)
Referring to Gandhi’s speech in which he said that the Constitution envisaged India as a union of states rather than a nation or kingdom, Modi quoted Nehru’s Discovery of India which talked about how despite a multiplicity of languages, there was a sense of unity among people, how “they remained as an Indian whose national heritage was one and whose moral and mental traits were also similar.”
To say that the Constitution doesn’t talk about the nation is an “insult” to the House, Modi said. “Nation is not a regime or a political system. For us, the nation is a living spirit.”
He also quoted Nehru’s speech to argue that even the first Prime Minister had underlined the importance of responsibility and duty that came with freedom.
Ridiculing the Congress on its tally of 44 seats in 2014, Modi said it had been winning elections for years with “Garibi Hatao” slogan but it was the poor who had shrunk the party’s footprint.
Alleging that there had been attempt to provoke the people of Tamil Nadu – Gandhi had mentioned the state in the context of the Centre not listening to its demand on NEET – Modi recalled how the people of Tamil Nadu had lined the streets to bid farewell to Chief Of Defence Staff Bipin Rawat as his body was being carried away after the helicopter crash.
The House later passed the motion by a voice vote thanking the President for his address to both Houses on January 31.
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