It’s good PM doesn’t take real questions, says Rahul Gandhi

New Delhi: Taking a swipe at Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Congress president Rahul Gandhi on Monday accused him of giving scripted interviews and said it would be an “embarrassment to us all” if he did take “real” questions.

“The first Indian PM who takes ‘spontaneous’ questions that the translator has pre-scripted answers to! Good that he doesn’t take real questions. Would have been a real embarrassment to us all if he did,” Mr Gandhi tweeted.

With his tweet, Mr Gandhi tagged a video of Mr Modi’s question and answer session at Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University (NTU) last Friday.

After the Prime Minister replied to a question on challenges faced by Asia, his English translator had read out an answer that was far longer and included details and data that were not in Mr Modi’s answer.

The video went viral on social media and fuelled speculation and criticism that the queries posed to the Prime Minister, and his responses to them, were not impromptu but pre-planned.

Earlier, Congress MP Shashi Tharoor had also taken a jibe at the Prime Minister over his interaction at NTU.

Mr Tharoor had tweeted, “Oh dear! When the translator says what the PM was supposed to say, but didn’t”.

The video has come as ammunition for the Congress which has often alleged that all interactions and interviews of Mr Modi are “scripted”.

This is not the first time that Mr Modi has been criticised for his public interactions abroad. He faced flak during his London trip in April when lyricist and censor board chief Prasoon Joshi “interviewed” him before a live audience. The session was unapologetically flattering.