By PTI
MANGLAUR: Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Thursday said he is not afraid of Prime Minister Narendra Modi or “his enforcement agencies” and finds his “arrogance” amusing.
The Congress leader said the BJP changed its chief ministers in Uttarakhand as they were all corrupt and “replaced one thief with another”.
Addressing a rally at Manglaur in Haridwar district ahead of the assembly polls in the state, Gandhi said, “Modi said in a an interview recently that I don’t listen to him. He was right. I don’t listen to him because I am not afraid of him or his CBI and ED.”
He said the three farm laws were withdrawn only because of the country’s farmers and the Congress.
“The Congress alone can fight Modi,” he said.
He said the Congress wants a government of the poor and unemployed in Uttarakhand and not that of a “King” who sits in Delhi.
Rahil Gandhi said he finds Modi’s arrogance amusing.
It reflects his arrogance when he says nothing was done in the country in the last 70 years, he said.
“Does he mean to say this country was asleep for 70 years and woke up after he came to power? Then how were these roads built, how were these rail lines laid — by magic? he asked.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi accused the Congress on Thursday of abusing General Bipin Rawat when he was alive and using his cut-outs now for votes.
Addressing a rally in Uttarakhand’s Srinagar ahead of the February 14 state Assembly polls, Modi said it is the same Congress that had asked for proof of surgical strikes against terror hideouts in Pakistan.
He said a leader of the party had even called former Chief of Defence Staff (CDS) General Rawat a “streetside hooligan”.
Describing the Congress as a party with a single-minded pursuit for power, the prime minister said it can never understand the price of “sacrifices”.
“The responsibility of giving the Congress a fitting reply in the coming polls for showing disrespect to General Rawat and using his name politically rests on the shoulders of the people of Uttarakhand,” he said.
Modi said Congress governments in the past had pushed development activities backwards and forced people to migrate in large numbers from the hills.
He said the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) Vision Document 2022 released on Wednesday will help make the decade that of Uttarakhand.
