- Thursday, April 25, 2024
By: Shubham Ghosh
With the Indian National Congress, one of India’s main opposition parties, ramping up attack against the Narendra Modi government over inflation and Goods and Services Tax (GST) among other issues, its former president Rahul Gandhi launched a scathing attack on the country’s finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Friday (5), calling her a “mouthpiece”.
In a press conference at the party’s headquarters in New Delhi that was allegedly barricaded by the local police earlier this week, Gandhi said he did not think Sitharaman has “any understanding of what is happening in the country”.
Sitharaman, it may be mentioned here, addressed both Houses of the Indian parliament this week in which she asserted that there was no chance of India going into a recession.
Leaders and workers of the Congress on Friday assembled at the party’s headquarters as part of a nationwide protest against inflation, hike in GST on essential items, and unemployment.
Gandhi, a parliamentarian from the southern Indian state of Kerala who later joined a protest held by his fellow party parliamentarians outside the parliament, said, “I think the macroeconomic fundamentals that she (Nirmala Sitharaman) is talking about is something else. I don’t think the finance minister has any understanding of what is going on in the economy of India, zero understanding. She is there as a mouthpiece.”
Rahul Gandhi, who along with her sister and Congress leader Priyanka Gandhi and parliamentarian Shashi Tharoor were detained while marching to Rashtrapati Bhavan to mark their protest on inflation, price rise, GST and unemployment, also slammed the Modi government accusing it of keeping government machineries “under control”.
“Not every institution in India is free and fair today. We are not fighting just one political party, we are fighting against the entire infrastructure of India,” the 52-year-old said.
“When we had a government (at the Centre), the infrastructure was fair. We didn’t control infrastructure. Back then, there used to be a fight between political parties only,” he said, adding, “At present, the entire financial infrastructure is with them. If anyone wants to support the other party, then ED, CBI is imposed against him.”
Gandhi also compared PM Modi with Hitler saying, “Hitler had also won elections, he too used to win elections. How did he do it? He had control of all of Germany’s institutions…Give me the entire system, then I will show you how elections are won.”
Congress party leaders Sonia Gandhi, Rahul Gandhi, Priyanka Gandhi Vadra and MP Mallikarjun Kharge among others on Friday chose to sport black-coloured outfits.
Lashing out at the Centre on its stand on issues like price rise and inflation, Rahul Gandhi on Friday said that India is witnessing the death of democracy.
“How do you feel about the death of democracy? What this country built in 70 years was destroyed in 8 years. There is no democracy in India today!” Gandhi said.
