 "Narendra Modi")
The PM also attacked Congress leadership, particularly former PM Manmohan Singh and Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi. Questioning the former PM's integrity, Modi expressed surprise that there was no blot on Singh even when he has been part of India's economic policy think tank since the early-1970s.
The PM was speaking at the foundation laying ceremony of Mahamana Pandit Madan Mohan Malaviya Cancer Centre in Varanasi, his Lok Sabha constituency. Modi said when he announced ‘note ban’ decision he didn't think it was possible that politicians and political parties would be so unashamed as to come out openly to defend the corrupt.
“Now I understand for whose benefit these protests (by the opposition) are taking place,” he said. Apart from likening the opposition to Pakistan, he also said his opponents reminded him of a gang of pickpockets at work at a village or town fair. He said the disruptions in Parliament during the winter session was to alert and protect the corrupt. Modi said when a pickpocket is at work in a village fair his associate distracts the police by misleading them and shouting that the pickpocket has fled in the other direction. “This is exactly the strategy being employed now to protect the corrupt,” the PM said at the event at the Banaras Hindu University.
The PM’s comments come a day after Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi demanded at a public rally in Mehsana in Gujarat that he come clean on allegations that he had received over Rs 40 crore in cash payments from individuals associated with the Sahara India Group and Aditya Birla Group when he was the chief minister of Gujarat. The BJP rubbished the allegations, and said these stem from the Congress Vice President’s frustration at successive electoral defeats.
However, today the PM targeted Gandhi, former PM Manmohan Singh and former finance minister P Chidambaram. He said people have suffered because of ‘note ban’, but are braving standing in queues for hours as they see a better future for the country. He said media was pushing people to make negative comments.
In an attack on former PM Manmohan Singh, Modi said it surprises him how some people lose their balance in their desire to be critical of him. “They cannot concede that they are trying to defend black money and corruption but they have to say something,” he said to Singh’s criticism of demonetization.
Modi said he has advocated cashless transactions as times are changing. There was a time when silver coins were used, which were replaced by paper currency and now it is the era of digitization. “But the former PM opposes this arguing how 50 per cent of the people of the country are poor and cannot go cashless. I want to ask him whether he is giving his tenure’s report card or mine. I have inherited this from him,” Modi said.
Ridiculing Singh, the PM said that it isn’t widely known but the former PM has been part of the core team that determined India’s economic policy from 1970-72 onwards. “But isn’t it strange there isn’t a single blot on his integrity (but all corruption takes place under his nose),” Modi said.
The PM also criticized Chidambaram, but reserved the sting for Gandhi. Modi didn’t refer to him by name, but said Singh and Chidambaram’s youth leader is learning to deliver speeches. Modi even mimicked Gandhi’s mannerism of pulling at his sleeves. “I feel delighted ever since he has learnt to speak and started delivering speeches. Until 2009, we didn’t know what’s inside this packet. Now we know,” the PM said.
To Gandhi’s comments that he has information of “personal corruption” by PM which if he were to make public could cause an earthquake, Modi said its good now that Gandhi has spoken. “We could have had an earthquake if he hadn’t spoken. But now that he has the country is spared of the earthquake,” he said.
The PM said such people even had problems with Indian soldiers entering Pakistani territory to carry out a ‘surgical strike’, but soon understood the mood of the nation and decided to shut up on the issue.
Modi said ‘note ban’ has decimated terrorism, Maoists and Naxalites and also the insurgency in the Northeast. The PM said an increasing number of Naxalites are surrendering these days because they have no money for sustenance after 'note ban'.
The PM is also slated to address BJP workers during his stay in Varanasi.
