Congress general secretary Ajay Maken on Monday hit out at Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi for criticizing the UPA Government's performance, saying the latter should conduct a research on the NDA's term in office between 1998 and 2004, before talking about the performance of the UPA regime.
"If he (Narendra Modi) wants to speak of the UPA's performance, then, he should compare the UPA's performance with that of the NDA's," Maken told media here.
"He should research the NDA's term before talking about the UPA. He should talk about what he has done in Gujarat," he added.
Maken also hit back at Modi's Olympic jibe and said: "Modi said we are performing poorly in the field of sports. As a former Sports Minister, I would like to ask Modi that as Gujarat's Chief Minister for over 10 years, what has he done for improving sports in the state? As far as I am concerned, 83 Indians qualified for the Olympics. My question is how many of them were from Gujarat? People from Gujarat are interested in sports, but as chief minister, what has he done?"
He also questioned Modi's record on promoting education in Gujarat, saying that principals' posts were vacant in several engineering colleges.
He asked: "When vacancies aren't being filled, how is he working on promoting education in his state?"
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Modi had on Sunday blamed the Congress for the deteriorating economic condition of the country, and specifically targeted Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, a great economist, for failing to prevent the free fall of the rupee.
"When India achieved Independence, that time one Indian rupee was equivalent to one U.S. dollar. Today, the Indian rupee is in a free fall. What is the reason behind the free fall of the rupee? It is because the Congress is neck-deep in corruption," he said, while addressing a public meeting in Pune.
He also criticized the government for pushing the food security ordinance through without a proper debate in both houses of parliament, and said the country needs action not acts.
"The Congress wants to take the full credit for the Food Security Bill. I want to ask the Delhi Government - during the Parliament session, why did you introduce an ordinance instead of bringing in the Food Security Bill itself? Why? It is because of a trust deficit between the Congress and its allies in the UPA. Government may not be able to provide food to the poor but it has decided to provide the poor a piece of a paper called Food Security Bill," he said.
Expressing concern about the education system in our country, Modi said that 'what India needed was modernisation, not westernisation'.
Addressing students at Pune's Fergusson College, Modi said: "Education has become a money-making business. We have become money-making machine from man-making machine. We need modernisation, not westernization."
"Since independence, we don't have a single education institution which can make us proud in the world," he added.