While addressing his first election rally at Almora in Kumaon region on Friday, the AICC vice- president Rahul Gandhi launched a scathing attack on the Narendra Modi Government over the demonetisation drive, saying that at least 100 people have died on the altar of the insensitive move of the Centre. “The Centre is so insensitive to the miserable plight of the poor, at the receiving end of the thoughtless move, that they rejected my proposal of observing two-minute silence in the memory of the deceased in the Parliament,” he said.
“We know that the poor keep aside a part of their hard-earned money for their children’s education and emergencies. But now, post- note ban, they are being forced to deposit it in the banks and face harassment,” he said.
Showing empathy for what he called the suffering multitude, Gandhi said while a person built a house by toiling by the sweat of their brow for years the insensitive rulers did not mind setting such houses on fire in an instant’s impulse.
“PM Modi is pitching for Paytm. But we wonder how the people would have Mohan Singh Kheem Singh’s bal mithai through PaytmIJ” he said.
Dubbing demonetisation as loot instead of taking on black money, Gandhi said that the Centre should have instead acted on three demands they had put before it, namely waiving of the farmers’ loans, waiving off half of the farmers’ electricity dues and announcing appropriate price for the food grains grown by them.
Repeating his party’s stance, he said that the loan of astronomical `1.40 lakh crore received by 15 families had been waived off at the instance of the Prime Minister. “ Modiji said pouring scorn of the labouers that they are meant to dig holes. But in reality, the working class people are those who build Hindustan,” he said.
“PM Modi has divided Hindustan into two parts. On one side, there stands one percent rich people while on the other, 99 percent of the country’s populace is there, comprising principally the farmers and the labourers. Over the past two and half years, they have helped the one percent affluent people amass money while they have landed the 99 percent people in a predicament unheard of since independence. The majority are honest people. They have no black money. Yet, they are being made to suffer. Real black money is either invested in real estates and lands or stashed in Swiss Bank. Nearly 94 percent of the black money is with 50 families, but they have been targeting the rest six percent, leaving the real hoarders of black money unscathed,” he said.
“PM Modi, adept in the politics of gimmick, assured that they would deposit `15 lakh in everyone’s account by bringing black money worth `15 lakh crore from abroad. Even a BJP Minister admitted in the Parliament that the Swiss Government has disclosed the names of the account holders. But they are sitting on the names, keeping both Houses of the Parliament in the dark. They offered toffee of `1200 crore to Vijay Mallaya but they did not bother to disburse `7500 crore to Uttarkahand. Modiji has not done surgical strike on corruption but they have launched firebombing over the honest people of the country. The money the women and others kept in their houses to be spent during adversity has been looted by the Government,” Gandhi said.
“Uttarkahand, known for money order and tourism based economy, has been hit hard. PM promised that they would give one crore employment per annum, but now SIIDCUl is retrenching its labourers. If you go through the data things would be clear that rate of unemployment has reached an all- time high in the last seven years,” the Congress leader said.
While addressing the meeting, Chief Minister Harish Rawat listed the achievements his government has made during its tenure.
“The state is resurrecting from the colossal damage the natural and political calamity has unleashed on it over the past two and half years. The state which collapsed after 2013 disaster is now on the cusp of becoming one out of six developed states. The per capita income has doubled. Our mission is to upgrade each of the poor by 2020 by giving employment to each family. We are disbursing highest number of pensions in the country and the figure of the beneficiaries would shoot up to 10 lakh by 2017. Now, we are providing electricity to the people for 24 hours while it was 14 hour earlier. We will connect all the villages with road by 2018,” CM said.