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The two political pioneers, set against each other for the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, tended to number of ralllies in the state.
While Modi played a patriotism card and blamed the Congress for promoting just a single family, Gandhi tore into him for his “personal assaults” that “doesn’t profit” of a man holding a high office.
Modi affirmed that the Congress had offended the Indian Army by scrutinizing reality behind 2016 surgical strikes against terrorists in Pakistan.
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“A daily paper said that Pakistan needed to evacuate casualties on their side in trucks after the surgical strikes. This was the bravery our soldiers showed and the Congress said ‘Modiji show us the evidence of this’. Do you need evidence?”
He said the Congress was spreading “lies” by blaming the BJP for being hostile to Dalit, against Muslim and hostile to ladies.
“We made a Dalit, the President of India, gave the nation its first lady Defense Minister. They spread lies that we are from the Hindi belt and have nothing to do with the south. But our Vice President is a South Indian.”
He said the BJP gave India a Muslim President in A.P.J. Abdul Kalam and the Congress couldn’t much convey on making its senior leader Mallikarjun Kharge, the Chief Minister as guaranteed in the last Assembly elections.
“The Congress is looking for votes of Dalits. Khargeji is a major pioneer of the Congress. In the last election, the Congress guaranteed they will make him the Chief Minister. In any case, he was sidelined. It couldn’t be any more obvious, how they deceived the Dalits.”
Gandhi, who has been forced to bear Modi’s salvos amid BJP’s election campaign in Karnataka, said the Prime Minister’s personal assaults suggested he had no responses to the issues raised by him.
He questioned his silence over the controversial Rafale fighter jet deal and fugitive diamond merchant Nirav Modi who duped the Punjab National Bank of thousands of crores of rupees.
“There ought to be truth in the words that leave the Prime Minister’s mouth. There ought to be some weight in his words.”
He said Modi had guaranteed to deposit Rs 15 lakh each in poor citizens’ bank accounts yet didn’t do it.
Gandhi said Modi likewise guaranteed two crore employments to the youth every year and highest minimum support cost to farmers however he did none of this.
“At that point what does he really do? He helps just 15 people. He helps the Reddy brothers (Janardhana, Karunakara and Somashekara Reddy) and wants to field them in the elections.”
Gandhi said Modi had little to talk about Karnataka, its farmers and youth, and consequently he was falling back on individual assaults against him which “won’t have any effect” to him.
“Modiji has almost nothing to talk about in this election. He can’t talk about farmers since he neither waived off their loans nor provided suitable MSP.
“He can’t talk about education, healthcare or developmental issues in light of the fact that the state’s Congress government has performed brilliantly on all fronts. So he is depending on personal assaults on me. Yet, this does not behove of a Prime Minister of India.”
He included that since Modi was the Prime Minister of India “I will not launch a personal attack against him”.
The 47-year-old Congress pioneer asked Modi for what valid reason he stayed quiet when Nirav Modi fled the nation with a hundred crores of rupees of public money and on BJP president Amit Shah’s son Jay Shah’s firm allegedly registering windfall profits after the BJP took power at the Centre in 2014.
“Why is Modiji quiet on this? He has a made fun of me yet has not addressed my questions.”