Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi on Thursday slammed Prime Minister Narendra Modi over the suspension of BJP MP Kirti Azad, who has been leading a campaign against finance minister Arun Jaitley on alleged corruption in the Delhi cricket body.
He also questioned the Prime Minister’s silence on issues related to corruption and said that the silence was deafening. “What happened to his famous statement — ‘na khaoonga na khane doonga’ During the election campaign, Mr Modi spoke about scams and said he would not allow corruption. But now scams are taking place and the latest is the cricket scam. The BJP MP who raised it has been suspended from the party. Mr Modi should break his silence on this issue because people have started losing faith,” Mr Gandhi told reporters on his way back to Delhi after a two-day visit to Amethi.
Mr Gandhi said that the Prime Minister should take action and conduct an inquiry into the allegations being levelled on the Delhi and District Cricket Association (DDCA).
Mr Gandhi also lashed out at the Modi government on the issue of unprecedented price rise. He took a dig at Mr Modi’s foreign tours and added that such trips would not benefit the country. “Inflation is at its peak and the BJP is responsible for the unprecedented price rise in the country. Nothing has been done for farmers and the youth. Whenever Mr Modi goes for an election campaign, he tries to create a Hindu-Muslim divide for the sake of votes,” he stated.
He said that after 1989, governments were formed in Uttar Pradesh on caste and religious lines, due to which development took a backseat and the state got mired in backwardness. “The Congress will spring a surprise in the 2017 Assembly polls,” he said.
Earlier in Amethi, Mr Gandhi asked village heads to raise their voice against cancellation of food park and paper mill projects in Amethi and said that the Congress wanted all welfare schemes of the Centre and the state to be implemented through gram pradhans.
At the AICC briefing in Delhi, Mr Ashwini Kumar questioned the NDA government over its “benchmark on corruption”, reminding the BJP that it used to make an issue of such incidents during the UPA rule. “Amidst expectations of a fair and credible probe into the DDCA scam and demands that the Prime Minister sack his finance minister Arun Jaitley to ensure probity in public life, Modi has done the opposite. The Congress is forced to ask as to why are the Prime Minister and BJP shielding, supporting and protecting perpetrators of corruption,” Mr Kumar told reporters.
The Congress has already demanded a probe into the DDCA scam by a joint parliamentary committee and a SIT to be monitored by either a Supreme Court or a high court judge.
