Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi on Friday accused Prime Minister Narendra Modi of practising ‘TRP’ politics and said the country has suffered damage due to his “vanity and incompetence”.
While Rahul described Modi as “a prisoner of his own image” and one who is inflicting “tremendous suffering” on the people of India to protect his own persona,” the BJP hit back at him, saying he was caught up in the habit of photo-ops and has been “surrounded by black money” all his life.
Addressing party Parliamentarians in the Congress Parliamentary Party (CPP) meeting, where ailing party chief Sonia Gandhi was not present, the Congress vice president said if Modi listened to the views of democratically elected members it could potentially prevent him from making the “catastrophic” policy mistakes he is currently making.
Accusing the Government of getting itself into a “complete mess” with regards to Pakistan, the Congress leader said, “Their policy on Pakistan is a complete failure”.
“We never gave India a Prime Minister who bypassed the experience of those sitting in the institutions. The country has suffered tremendous damage as a result of the vanity and incompetence of our PM. The Congress never gave India a Prime Minister who was a prisoner of his own image. We never gave India a Prime Minister, who was ready to inflict such tremendous suffering on the people of India to protect his own persona. We never gave India a Prime Minister who based his entire policy making strategy on TRPs,” Rahul said chairing CPP for the first time.
Excerpts of his speech in the central hall of Parliament were later aired by television channels though such meetings are generally out of bounds for the media.
Accusing Modi of single handedly declaring war on the world’s fastest growing economy due to the “catastrophic experiment” of demonetisation, which is “badly conceived and incompetently implemented”, he said its results will soon be revealed to the entire world.
“Every economist of repute has already condemned it and questioned its capacity to realise the goals it is supposed to achieve. Modiji has created a massive new corrupt black market that is working overtime to convert the black money to white,” he charged.
Rahul Gandhi said the PM “confused” India’s entire cash economy with black economy, demonetised 86 per cent of Indian bank notes and decided to experiment with the financial future of 1.3 billion people. “All cash is not black money and all black money is not cash,” he said, adding that instead of attacking black money, he attacked the very foundations of the country’s economy.
Rahul also accused Modi of sitting silently when Kashmir is burning and said he has “gifted massive political space” to anti-India forces by forging an alliance with PDP. He also targeted the Prime Minister over his policy towards Pakistan and said he is the same person who used to ridicule UPA’s Pak policy that led to isolation of Pakistan and brought peace to Kashmir.
“Today the same person who used to ridicule us sits silently while Kashmir burns. Narendra Modi will be judged by history as the man who gifted massive political space to anti- India forces by creating an opportunistic political alliance between the BJP and the PDP. He has created the political vacuum that gives the terrorists space to operate,” he said.
Union Minister Harsimrat Kaur said it is not the Prime Minister but the Congress vice-president who is caught up in the habit of photo-ops and accused the Congress of spreading corruption like cancer in every part of the country and said that it was unable to digest the fact that a “strong leader” has taken decisive action against the menace.
“His party has been in Government for 60 years. For the last ten years, he himself was in power. But in all these time, beside spreading corruption like cancer into every corner of our society, besides looting the nation, 2G to CWG to Bofors, this Congress party and the Gandhi family has nothing to their credit. Now when a Government has come which is trying to root out black money and corruption, obviously Rahul Gandhi is not able to understand because they never had this desire to understand,” Kaur said outside the Parliament.