BHOPAL: Former Congress chief Rahul Gandhi had to skip the Lok Sabha poll campaign in Madhya Pradesh, after reportedly falling ill suddenly on Sunday.
It was the current party president Mallikarjun Kharge who addressed the rally in the Vindhya region’s Satna constituency, which will be among those seats which vote on April 26.
Hitting out at PM Narendra Modi and Union home minister Amit Shah, Kharge said democracy would end in the country, if the “Modi-Shah sarkar” returned to power. He also claimed that they (Modi regime) will change the Constitution, if voted to power for the third time.
“The PM says that even Dr BR Ambedkar couldn’t change the Constitution today. But why does his party MPs and MLAs reiterate that two-thirds majority for the party in the LS polls was a must for changing the Constitution. If you want to keep alive the Constitution, the right to vote for women, labourers and farmers, then vote for Congress,” Kharge said.
Kharge also attacked Modi-Shah for taking those into the BJP fold, who were “corrupt” till they were in other parties. “It seems Shah has a big laundry with a washing machine which washes all those who are corrupt, before inducting them into the BJP.”
The Congress president was particularly critical of the Modi government for failing to check the price rise and unemployment. “Ten years back Modi had promised Rs 15 lakh to every person, two crore jobs every year, which means 20 crore jobs in a decade. How many here are among those who got those 20 crore jobs?”
The Satna seat of the Vindhya region is among the two seats of the region bordering eastern UP, which will vote in the second phase on April 26.
Fourth-time BJP MP Ganesh Singh is pitted against second-time Congress MLA Siddharth Kushwah in a rerun of the 2023 Satna seat assembly polls, where Kushwah had defeated Singh by less than 6,000 votes. Making the contest interesting is ex-BJP MLA Narayan Tripathi, who is contesting as a BSP candidate.
The country’s unemployment rate is the highest in the past 45 years but there is no account of it, he said. Kharge also claimed that the country’s assets like airports, roads are being sold to ‘two buyers’.