Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Tuesday said that the Modi government has taken control of all the key institutions, and it has done so not democratically but forcibly.
Addressing a press conference here on the third and final day of his ‘Kheti Bachao Yatra’ in Punjab against the farm laws, Rahul said that the BJP government has captured the soul of the country, which is what the Congress is fighting, adding that this fight will become more and more aggressive, going forward.
He said that Prime Minister Modi is not interested in India’s people but is only concerned about protecting and promoting his image. Rahul, however, said that while the government may have captured the institutions, the fact is they cannot control the farmers, the youth and the small traders, whose interests they are destroying.
“I work among these people, who are the hardest hit by Modi’s policies. I am a patient person, and will wait till the people of India see the truth,” he added. Rahul was flanked by Punjab Chief Minister Captain Amarinder Singh, who informed the media that his government will soon bring a special session to scuttle these legislations of the Centre.
Rahul, on his part, said that he was committed to fighting against the Modi government’s attack on farmers, just as they had earlier targeted SMEs and small traders with demonetisation and GST. “I will fight them and stop them,” he said, pointing out that if MSP goes, Punjab, Haryana, and other agricultural states like UP and Rajasthan will have no future left.
Calling the existing food security system a fortress for the farmers, Rahul said it had needed improvement and reforms, which is what the Congress manifesto had also promised. He cited key promises of development of the agricultural system through farmer markets, mandis every few km, farm to fork infrastructure, etc.
“We never said we will destroy the whole food security system, which Modi has done with these farm laws,” he said. He warned that this will affect the entire chain of the system, rendering lakhs of people employed in the farming sector jobless, and also ending the subsidies for the poor.
“In any case, if Modi was so confident that these laws were beneficial to farmers, why didn’t he face a debate in Parliament, why did he push the laws during Covid times when the farmers cannot come out on the roads, why did he not hold a press conference or come and meet the farmers in Punjab,” quipped Rahul.
Taking a dig at the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) for criticising his tractor ride on a ‘gaddi’ (cushion) put there by someone else, Rahul Gandhi quipped that the Prime Minister’s new Air India One plane, bought for more than Rs 8000 crore of the taxpayers’ money, had not just a cushion but a whole lot of luxury beds for his comfort.
Rahul said PM Modi wasted thousands of crores of rupees on the plane just because “his friend Donald Trump (US President) has one.” It was strange, he said, that nobody is seeing or questioning the VVIP Boeing 777 purchased for this whopping amount, but everyone being quick to point to the ‘gaddi’ which some wellwisher had put on a tractor for him, said the Congress leader.