PORBANDAR: The Modi government’s economic policies came under Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi’s vitriolic attacks in Porbandar on Friday.
Addressing a rally in election-bound Gujarat’s Porbandar, Rahul Gandhi accused the government of crony capitalism and said they were working for industrialists and not for farmers or fishermen.
“Congress had given Rs 33,000 crore for NREGA. Narendra Modi gave the same amount for Tata Nano. Are you driving Tata Nano? The truth is that if a big industrialist asks for money from Narendra Modi, he is ready to give Rs 33,000 crore to that one person. But if every fisherman approaches him, they will not even get Rs 300 crore," he said.
“In the last few years all the work in Gujarat has been done for just five or ten industrialists and those industrialists contributed to campaigning for Narendra Modi later on. But Gujarat doesn’t belong to those industrialists, it belongs to farmers and fishermen,” he said.
Taking a dig at the regular radio broadcasts by the Prime Minister, Rahul Gandhi said the Congress wanted to hear the people’s ‘Mann ki Baat’.
Earlier in the day, Rahul also visited Porbandar's Kirti Mandir, which was the birthplace of Mahatma Gandhi. The Congress vice president is on a two-day trip to Porbandar where voting will take place in the first phase of the Gujarat elections on December 9. Results would be announced for the Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh Assembly elections on December 18.
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has been in power in Gujarat since 1995 and PM Modi was the chief minister of the state between 2001 and 2014. The BJP government is the state is led by Vijay Ruphani who was appointed chief minister after the Patidaar agitation last year. Porbandar, Mahatma Gandhi’s birthplace, is represented both in the state assembly and the Lok Sabha by a member of the BJP.
