Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi criticised the economic policies of the NDA Government led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Addressing a public rally in Bengaluru on Wednesday after inaugurating Indira canteens for the poor on the Tamil Nadu’s Amma Canteen model, he said, the Narendra Modi-led Government had failed to tackle poverty and unemployment in the last three years of its rule. Congress leader blamed the Modi Government’s faulty domestic and foreign policies for the escalation of violence in Jammu and Kashmir.
He flayed the Jammu and Kashmir policy alleging that it has created a space in the troubled State for Pakistan to “misbehave”. His attack on the Government comes a day after Modi, in his Independence Day address, reached out Kashmiris, saying abuses and bullets would not resolve their problems but embracing them would.
“He (Modi) has created an environment in Jammu & Kashmir of hatred and anger, and the only people who benefit from violence and hatred are the Pakistanis,” he said.
Claiming that he worked on the J&K issue with Manmohan Singh, who was the Prime Minister, and leaders like P Chidambaram and Jairam Ramesh silently without any “drama or tamasha”, he said their effort of 10 years was “destroyed by Modi in one month”.
Gandhi said that the Congress-led coalition in 2004 inherited a Government from Atal Bihari Vajpayee under which Kashmir was “burning”, and one of the biggest successes of the Manmohan Singh Government was creating an environment of peace in J&K.
“India’s biggest asset is its youth and they have to be empowered. Modi has failed to address the serious issue of providing jobs. He had lied while saying that he would create two crore jobs. Now India has highest rate of unemployment in the last eight years. This is Modi's achievement,” he said.
Congress vice-president blamed the Union Government for the death of children at a Ghorkapur hospital. He said the tragedy was due to the Union Government slashing allocations to the Government hospitals.
He also came down heavily on the BJP Government’s China policy that had led to the aggressive neighbour cross India and Bhutan borders.
“Modi was not wise while giving special treatment to Chinese premier during his visit to India. He sat with him in the swing and hugged him. When somebody brings home a ‘crook’ do you treat him this way. Do you sit in a swing and chat with him. The result was that over 1000 Chinese soldiers’ introduced into Doklam and our friendly neighbour Bhutan,” he stated.
“It is our duty to safeguard interests of Bhutan. But our Prime Minister himself says that Chinese soldiers are there in the tiny country. Then what is he doingIJ He is more interested in dividing the country on communal lines than safeguarding the strategic interest of India,'' he charged.