Prime Minister Narendra Modi said in the poll-bound Madhya Pradesh on Thursday that Congress leaders, when the party was in power at the Centre, had “used” the country’s poor for tourism for their friends from other countries.
Addressing an election rally in Bundelkhand’s Chhatarpur, Mr. Modi mentioned of a G20 meet held in Khajuraho and alleged that for the Congress the whole country used to “start and end in Delhi”.
“Schemes used to be announced in Delhi. Foreign leaders used to come to Delhi. If Congress leaders ever took their foreign friends out of Delhi, what did they show? These Congress leaders used to take their foreign friends to show the poverty of India. For the leaders of the Congress, who were born with a golden spoon, the poor had become a tourism,” he said.
Mr. Modi also alleged that the Congress was like a “vehicle which takes us in reverse gear”.
Alleging that the Congress had “done nothing” to resolve the water crisis of the Bundelkhand region, the Prime Minister asked the public to make the Congress deprive of power for 100 years.
Meanwhile, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, at a rally in Gwalior-Chambal region’s Ashok Nagar, reiterated his party’s promise of holding a caste-based survey in the State and termed the exercise an x-ray to detect the problems of the OBCs, Dalits and tribals.
“Narendra Modi ji says in every speech that I am an OBC. But when we talk about caste census, Modi ji starts saying that there are no castes in the country and only poverty is a caste,” he said.
Talking about M.P., Mr. Gandhi said, “The budget of Madhya Pradesh is approximately ₹3.5 lakh crore and Shivraj Singh Chouhan and his 53 officers decide how the budget will be spent. Out of these 53 officers, only one officer is from the backward class.”
Mr. Gandhi also said that the Bharat Jodi Yatra (his foot-march from Kanyakumari to Kashmir) has given him a new perspective about the nation.
“We travelled 4,000 kilometres across India from Kanyakumari to Kashmir and during that journey we met lakhs of people. during this time I also went through Madhya Pradesh and met farmers, mothers, sisters, youth and took to the streets to tell the country. I got a chance to understand deeply. This trip completely changed me and gave me a new perspective,” the Congress MP said.
