Rahul equates PM with ‘pickpocket’ during rally

The Asian Age.  | Joseph Rao

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He blamed the PM and chief minister Devendra Fadnavis of speaking about everything except the real issues.

Congress leader Rahul Gandhi waves at the crowd during an election campaign rally in Wardha district on Tuesday. (Photo: PTI)

Nagpur: Former Congress chief Rahul Gandhi Tuesday accused the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government in the state and at the Centre of being pro-rich and termed Prime Minister Narendra Modi as the “loudspeaker of Adani and Ambani”.

Addressing an election rally at Arvi in the neighbouring Wardha district, Mr Gandhi said that the government does not care about unemployment or the situation of farmers and their families in Vidarbha but only about rockets landing on the Moon and the scrapping of Article 370.

Mr Gandhi blamed the government for not doing anything for crisis-ridden farmers in the country and particularly in Vidarbha while the UPA government, led by Dr Manmohan Singh, in 2006 waived farm loans worth over `70,000 crore to bail out the distressed farmers.

Mr Gandhi also said that unemployment would double within the next six months and the youth would not get jobs till the Narendra Modi government is removed.

He blamed the PM and chief minister Devendra Fadnavis of speaking about everything except the real issues.

“Modi is the loudspeaker of (industrialists) Adani and Ambani. Just like a pickpocket, who diverts attention of people before stealing, his (Modi's) only job is to divert your attention so that he can pass your money to a select few industrialists,” Mr Gandhi said.

The former Congress chief claimed that the NDA 2 waived the taxes of big corporates to the tune of `1.25 lakh crores ahead of his visit to the US where he met president Donald Trump even as his government failed to deposit `6,000, a sum that was assured during the Lok Sabha elections, to the common man’s accounts.

Meanwhile, senior Congress leader Mallikarj-un Kharge Tuesday accu-sed the BJP-led alliance of marketing the entire election campaign and exploiting the sentiments of the people while completely neglecting the core issues of unemployment, farmers’ suicides and closure of industries.

He claimed that the Congress-NCP alliance is garnering support and will have its own candidate elected as chief
minister.

Addressing a press conference, Mr Kharge and state Congress president Balasaheb Thorat said that going by statistics, the GDP is far below expectations and farmer suicides are continuing unabated.

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