New Delhi: Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sithraman on Sunday (May 17) took a break from announcing new reforms in the fifth and the final tranche to lash out at Congress leader Rahul Gandhi for his impromptu meeting with a group of migrant workers in Delhi on Saturday afternoon. The Union Minister called Rahul's act as nothing but a 'drama'.
Nirmala was announcing the fifth and the final tranche of Rs 20 lakh crore economic stimulus package of Centre when she stated, "Rahul Gandhi’s act of speaking for migrant labourers is drama."
"Why don't Congress-ruled states request for more trains so that more migrants can reach home. They call us dramebaaz. What about yesterday? They sat beside migrants who were walking back home and spoke to them. That is dramabaazi. It would have been better if he had walked alongside migrants, holding their children and suitcases," Sitharaman said.
She also urged the opposition party to work together for migrants and asked Congress party president Sonia Gandhi to join the efforts of the government in handling migrants issue and to deal with them more responsibly. "I want to tell the Opposition party that on the issue to migrants we all must work together. We are working with all states on this issue. With folded hands, I ask Sonia Gandhi ji that we must speak and deal with our migrants more responsibly," she stated during the conference.
On Sunday, Rahul held an hour-long sit-in with a group of 20 migrant workers, including women and children, walking from their worksite near Ambala to their village near Jhansi. The meeting took place as they sat on the footpath on Mathura road in the national capital.
Later, the party claimed that the Delhi Police took some of the migrant workers into preventive custody soon after their meeting with the former Congress president, a charge which was denied by the Delhi Police. The party claimed that the police told them that "they had directions to do so."
The Congress and other Opposition parties have been vocally critical of the government at Centre on the handling of migrants during the coronavirus lockdown.
