MUMBAI:Lashing out at the NDA rule under PM Narendra Modi, a confident former Congress president Sonia Gandhi said on Friday that alternative voices were being silenced violently and her party won’t let the BJP come back to power in 2019.“I am confident, really, that the BJP’s ‘acche din’ is turning out to be like the India Shining campaign, that brought us to victory in 2004,” Sonia said. She slammed the government for cynically running down the past accomplishments of Congress.
“I would like to ask, if I may, was India really a giant black hole before 16 May, 2014? Did India’s march to progress, prosperity and greatness begin only four years ago? Is this claim not an insult to the intelligence of our people? This deliberate unwillingness to acknowledge what our country has achieved is just arrogance.”
“This cynical running down of our past accomplishments, which have been a huge collective endeavour of the people of India, is nothing but conceit. It is not here a matter of taking credit. It is simply a matter of recognising India’s strength and strenuous efforts over the past decades,” the UPA Chairperson said.
“This is a well sort-out project long in the making to refashion the very idea of India. It involves rewriting history, falsifying facts, slander nation-builders and fanning prejudice and bigotry.”
She said alternative voices were being silenced, literally in far too many cases through violence, even murdered. “The freedom to think for oneself, to differ and disagree, to eat according to one’s choice, to meet or marry, according to one’s wishes - all this and more is under attack. Where amity and harmony were encouraged, religious tensions are being fuelled. Vigilante mobs and private armies have been let loose with state patronage.”
The former Congress chief said RTI brought in to enhance transparency and fight corruption is in cold storage and RTI activists are being killed. “We should all be concerned that the foundational principles and values of our Constitution are being willfully shredded.”