BHOPAL/JAIPUR: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Sunday hit out at the Congress in rallies in Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan for dragging his parents into the election campaign across Assembly poll-bound states and claimed the opposition party’s chief, Rahul Gandhi, was allowing leaders to do so.
“A Congress leader first used abusive language for my mother, who doesn’t even understand the R of Rajneeti (politics) and neither knows where actually Madhya Pradesh is. But the leaders of Congress didn’t stop there. When they didn’t get anything by abusing my mother, they’ve now dragged my father into their political speeches. Are they bereft of all other issues that they are now dragging my mother and dead father in their speeches?” asked Modi while addressing a poll rally in Union minister Sushma Swaraj’s parliamentary constituency Vidisha.
On Sunday, a video of former union minister and Congress leader Vilas Muttemwar addressing a party meeting on Saturday, surfaced on social media. In the video, Muttemwar, who hails from Maharashtra’s Vidarbha region is seen saying, “Who knew you (Modi) before you became the PM. Even now, nobody knows the name of your father, but everybody knows the name of Congress president Rahul Gandhi’s father and other ancestors.”
“My father died 30 years ago. No one from my family, even in the last 100 generations, has been associated with politics… we belong to a small poor family. But they (Congress leaders) have now dragged my dead father also in their politics. What’s reason behind it?” questioned Modi.
“The naamdaar of Congress (Rahul Gandhi) says even I comment about his family, but let me tell him that I don’t speak about his family members. We speak about the former PM’s of the country and the former top leaders of the Congress. If anyone of my family was associated with politics at any point of time, Naamdaar, you had full right to comment and seek account of their performance,” said Modi.
He further said, “The words spoken by the Congress leaders about my mother and dead father are not of those speaking them, but instead the words of their top leader, the Naamdaar (Rahul Gandhi). Everyone knows that right from a Congress worker in a lane to the Congress worker in Delhi, none of them can speak anything without Naamdar’s permission. So it’s very clear, whose words are being uttered by these leaders.”
In his first rally in Alwar, Rajasthan in the final phase Modi kept up his attack on the Congress and saying he party was indulging in caste-based politics. “The Congress does not have any issue that is why they abuse my mother and question my caste. I know it is all being done on the instructions of the naamdaar (Rahul Gandhi),” he said.
He added that the Congress should stick to a debate on the work of the Vasundhara Raje government. They can’t come out to debate on current government’s performance, he added.