Singling out Narendra Modi and his party for a blistering attack, Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi on Wednesday accused the BJP of trying to ‘take away’ power from the people and vest all powers with ‘one person’ which was detrimental to the interest of the country, and slammed its prime ministerial candidate for his ‘double-speak’ on the issue of corruption.
Addressing his first election rally at Aurangabad in Marathwada region after the declaration of the schedule for the lok Sabha polls, Gandhi said: “We strongly believe that the nation cannot be run by one person, but by crores of people. That’s why we are trying to empower people. We tried to push Panchayiti Raj, which BJP opposed, we gave people right to information, right to work in the form of NREGA and right to food in the form of food security act. When we talk about empowerment politics, it is all about empowering people. On the contrary what the BJP wants to take away power from people and vest all the powers with one person. The nation will stand to lose because of this”.
Gandhi said that the BJP was trying to ‘centralise’ power in ‘one person,’ while the Congress was all for ‘opening up the system and handing over power to common man’.
“We are all for empowering poor and common people. That’s why we are talking about opening up of the system and empowering people. But, these people are saying: close down the system, not to involve the people in running the country, but hand over the entire system to one person. let him do what he wants. No. That’s not done. Power should be with people. The nation will progress only when we empower different sections of the society,” he said.