Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Wednesday alleged that the electoral bonds scheme was the biggest “extortion scheme” in the world and Prime Minister Narendra Modi was the “champion of corruption”.
The former Congress president made the remarks while addressing first joint press conference along with Samajwadi Party chief and former Uttar Pradesh chief minister Akhilesh Yadav here.
Rahul Gandhi also emphasised that there is a strong undercurrent in favour of the opposition Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance (I.N.D.I.A) bloc in the Lok Sabha elections and the BJP will manage to get 150 seats.
He also asserted that he will follow the Congress decision on whether he should contest in Amethi.
Rahul Gandhi said, “A few days ago, the Prime Minister gave a very long interview to ANI. It was scripted, but it was a flop show.”
Taking a swipe at the electoral bond scheme, Rahul Gandhi said, “The Prime Minister tried to explain electoral bonds in it. The Prime Minister says that the system of electoral bonds was brought for transparency, to clean politics. If this is true then why was that system cancelled by the Supreme Court. And secondly, if you wanted to bring transparency then why did you hide the names of those who gave money to BJP. And why did you hide the dates on which they gave you the money?”
“This is the biggest extortion scheme in the world. All the businessmen of India understand and know this and no matter how much clarification the Prime Minister wants to give, it will not make any difference. Because the entire country knows that the Prime Minister is the champion of corruption,” he alleged.
He dubbed the 2024 Lok Sabha elections as a fight to save democracy and the Constitution.
The Congress leader said, “This election is an election of ideology. On the one hand, RSS and BJP are trying to destroy the Constitution and the democratic system, and on the other hand, the I.N.D.I.A alliance and Congress are trying to defend and protect the Constitution and democracy.”
He asserted that there two to three big issues in the elections. “Unemployment is the biggest and inflation is the second biggest but BJP is engaged in creating distractions…Neither the Prime Minister nor the BJP talks about the issues,” he said taking a pot shot at the BJP.
When asked how Congress plans to provide employment and end poverty, he said, “In the last 10 years, Prime Minister Modi has reduced the system of employment generation by demonetization, by implementing wrong GST and by supporting the big billionaires.
“The first task is to once again strengthen employment, for that we have given 23 ideas in our manifesto, one idea is the revolutionary idea- Right to Apprenticeship. We have decided that we will give the Right to Apprenticeship to all the graduates and diploma holders of Uttar Pradesh. There will be training and we will deposit Rs 1 lakh per year in the bank account of the youth and we are giving these rights to crores of youth…We will make a law for paper leaks as well,” he said explaining the yuva nyay of the party mentioned in Congress’s manifesto.
On the upcoming Lok Sabha elections, he said, “I do not do prediction of seats. 15-20 days ago I was thinking BJP would win around 180 seats but now I think they will get 150 seats. We are getting reports from every state that we are improving. We have a very strong alliance in Uttar Pradesh and we will perform very well…”