Rahul Gandhi takes swipe at PM: ‘His time to go has come’

New Delhi: Taking a swipe at Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Congress President Rahul Gandhi Wednesday said his expression during his address to the nation betrayed his anxiety that “his time to go has come”.

Addressing a convention of the party’s Other Backward Classes (OBC) department, Mr Gandhi said the Prime Minister has realised that the Congress will now give justice to the poor.

“He (PM) made the country wait for 45 minutes for his announcement, did you look at his face? He has realised that the Congress will now give justice...Modi is now afraid that his time to go has come,” he told the gathering at the Indira Gandhi Indoor Stadium here, ahead of the April-May parliamentary election. In an unprecedented broadcast to the nation on television, radio and social media, Modi on Wednesday announced that India had demonstrated anti-satellite missile capability by shooting down a live satellite, describing it as a rare achievement that puts the country in an exclusive club of space superpowers.

The newly-announced NYAY (minimum income guarantee scheme) whereby the party promised to give Rs 72,000 per year to five crore poor families in the country to bring them out of poverty, was justice, the Congress chief said and asserted that Modi’s promises were “lies” and thus injustice.

The Congress president also assured the OBC community that they would see many more MPs and MLAs from among them as the Congress had earlier given two OBC chief ministers to the country.

“I am guaranteeing the OBC community that soon they will be given more space in the Congress party. In the coming days there will more CMs, more MLAs...This is my guarantee. I am not Narendra Modi, I don’t lie. I have taken this challenge to give space to the OBC, dalit, farmers, poor...In Congress,” he said.