THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Rajiv Gandhi was a very tall leader unlike Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the Congress agenda is to see that Modi is ousted from power since he has butchered the sanctity of democracy, senior Congress leader AK Antony said on Monday.
"Rajiv Gandhi as Prime Minister sacrificed Congress governments in then troubled Punjab, Assam, and Mizoram to ensure that peace returned to these states, while the Bharatiya Janata Party governments (in the states) are used by Modi to unsettle peace," the former Defence Minister said at a party meeting here held to commemorate the death anniversary of Rajiv Gandhi.
Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated on May 21, 1991, by a woman operative of the now-vanquished Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam at a rally in Tamil Nadu's Sriperumbudur town in a bomb blast.
"Modi is one who gives the least importance to values, while Rajiv Gandhi was one who stood for these. Had the former Prime Minister been alive, by now India would have reached among the top nations of the world. It was during his times that huge strides was made in the information technology and telecommunication sectors," he added.
"The process to oust Modi from power has already started. We will accomplish the task by joining hands with secular parties. That's what we saw in Karnataka where the Congress and Janata Dal-Secular teamed up (to keep the BJP out of power)," Antony said.
Antony also accused Modi of misusing the Karnataka Governor's office to ensure that even when the Congress-JD-S combine had more seats in the new Assembly than the BJP, it was not invited to form the government.
"Six Union Ministers led by Piyush Goyal stayed put in Bengaluru to see that a minority BJP government got a majority through horse trading," the senior Congress leader said.