Kalaburagi (Karnataka): Congress president Rahul Gandhi on Tuesday accused the RSS of trying to “capture” every institution and charged that NDA ministers at the Centre were not operating independently as the Sangh Parivar outfit’s men have been planted in each ministry. He also said the idea of demonetisation was given to Prime Minister Narendra Modi by a “particular ideologue” of the RSS.
“In every single ministry in India, at the national level there is an OSD from the RSS working with the minister… The minister is not operating on his own,” he said.
Interacting with professionals and the business community at the end of his four-day campaign in poll-bound Karnataka, Mr Gandhi said, “The approach is of capture… an institution… as opposed to allowing an institution to serve the people of India and allowing the people of India to capture the institution.”
“This is the fundamental conflict we have with the BJP. Their idea is wherever they go, they plant people with their ideology into that organisation,” he said.
The Congress idea is to “democratise” institutions while the BJP believes in “bureaucratising” institutions, he said.
Mr Gandhi said the idea of note ban was also given by an RSS ideologue. “Do you know where the idea of note bandi (note ban) came from? Do you know who gave the idea of note bandi to the Prime Minister… It was not RBI, it was not Arun Jaitley (finance minister), it was not an officer in the finance ministry,” Mr Gandhi said.
“It was a particular ideologue of the RSS. Now you imagine — the RSS places an idea into the Prime Minister’s mind and the Prime Minister launches that idea,” said Mr Gandhi, who blamed the PM for the ill-advised move saying it had wreaked havoc on the lives of people.
He said even a child will know that it is not a good idea to “destroy” Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes that allowed the corrupt to convert their black money into white.
The ruling Congress is seeking to retain power in Karnataka where Assembly polls are due in May this year, while the BJP is eyeing to wrest it from it in the only southern state the saffron party has ever ruled.
The BJP was in power in Karnataka from May 2008 to May 2013. During this period, the saffron party named three chief ministers — B.S. Yeddyurappa, D.V. Sadananda Gowda and Jagadish Shettar.
Reiterating his strong opposition to the “Gabbar Singh Tax”(GST), Mr Gandhi made a promise to “reform and simplify” it (when his party comes to power). He again blamed Mr Modi for introducing GST solely with the intent to “show off” to the world.
“The Congress had a simple concept about GST. It wanted one tax slab for a large number of items used by the general public and another slab for the rest. Moreover, we had suggested introducing it as a pilot project for three months and later on extending it after seeing the results. When this suggestion was put before finance minister Arun Jaitley, the latter expressed his inability saying that the PM had already made up his mind. It’s a self-inflicted injury and the result of Mr Modi’s desire to show off to the world. We will reform and remove the hurdles that have been created,” Mr Gandhi assured.
Replying to a women entrepreneur, Mr Gandhi said that he was for encouraging more women in different fields including politics.
“I want to bring more women from panchayat bodies to the Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha. I want to see more women MLAs, MPs and CMs. I will speak to my party CMs in different states in this regard. I’m also of the view that bank loans should be given directly to women entrepreneurs,” he added.
