Accusing Prime Minister Narendra Modi of distorting facts, Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge on November 20 said he had never mentioned his father in any of his speeches. Mr. Modi’s false allegation against him was yet another jumla (locution), as it was so characteristic of the Prime Minister to twist the things, Mr. Kharge said.
Addressing an election rally in Rajasthan’s Hanumangarh, Mr. Kharge said Mr. Modi, despite being in power for 23 years, first as the Gujarat Chief Minister and later as the Prime Minister, was still fond of “crying victimhood” to gain public sympathy. “Beware of such hypocrites and their hypocrisy. It is very dangerous,” he said.
Mr. Modi had accused Mr. Kharge at a public meeting in Nagaur on Saturday of making derogatory remarks about his deceased father. He referred to the Congress president’s comments in Hyderabad, where he had described both the Prime Minister and “his baap [father]”, referring to Telangana Chief Minister K. Chandrashekhar Rao, as liars. Mr. Kharge said Mr. Rao did not have the money to fulfil his promises.
‘My father was labourer’
Commenting on Mr. Modi’s claim that he was the son of a poor man, Mr. Kharge said his own father was a labourer and he had joined politics to serve people rather than dividing them. The BJP was dividing the people in the name of caste and religion, he said.
The Congress president said his party was not bothered about the abuses hurled by Mr. Modi on leaders such as Sonia Gandhi, Rahul Gandhi and himself. “Congress leaders believe in sacrificing their lives for the nation, whereas the BJP believes in taking the lives of others,” he said, while asking who had killed Mahatma Gandhi and where were Nathuram Godse’s supporters.
Taking a dig at Mr. Modi for accusing the Congress of corruption, Mr. Kharge said the BJP was inducting all the tainted leaders from other parties. “Amit Shah has a big washing machine in which all these tainted leaders are put and they come out clean”, he said.
In Ajmer, Congress general secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra shot back at Mr. Modi’s remarks that the Congress leaders were running out each other. Ms. Vadra said at a public meeting that the BJP was “already out by hit-wicket”. “The Congress believes that the people, not the governments, who own the country’s assets. The wealth should be utilised for their welfare,” she said.
“The Congress is completely united and everyone [in the party] is giving his best,” Ms. Vadra said, while affirming that the BJP, in contrast, was “totally scattered and disintegrated” in Rajasthan. All the senior BJP leaders had been pushed to a corner and the party did not have a chief ministerial face, she said.
The Congress leader said her party was comfortably winning in Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh, where the polling had been completed. In Rajasthan, the march of progress launched by the Congress government would go ahead for another five years, she said.
Ms. Vadra alleged that the BJP governments, wherever they were in office, were only working for the rich and had nothing to offer to the poor or middle classes. “The rich are getting richer and the poor getting poorer in the BJP rule. While the average income of farmers is ₹27 per day, billionaire Gautam Adani earns ₹1,600 crore a day,” she said.
