Speaking in Lok Sabha, Leader of Opposition Rahul Gandhi took a jibe at the Union budget presented by the BJP-led NDA government at the Center, stating ‘Desh ka halwa but raha hai’.
Rahul was referring to the customary halwa ceremony conducted before the Union budget is presented.
“We expected that it would help farmers, labourers and small and medium businesses. But the sole aim of the business is to strengthen the framework of monopoly business, political monopoly and the deep state or the agencies,” Rahul said.
“The budget did nothing to end this tax terrorism…the finance minister did not say a word on the paper leak,” Rahul said.
He tried to show a picture of the halwa ceremony. “This photo shows budget ka halwa being distributed in this photo. I can’t see one OBC or tribal or a Dalit officer in this. Twenty officers prepared the budget … Hindustan ka halwa 20 logon ne baatne ka kaam kiya hai…” Rahul said.
“Out of the 20 officers, there is only one OBC and one minority, and they were not even shown in the picture,” he added.
However, the view was immediately shifted to speaker Om Birla who expressed disappointment in the senior Congress leader.
When Rahul protested, Birla said, “You hold a constitutional position. You cannot bring posters into the House.”
Oppn will break BJP’s ‘chakravyuh’: Rahul
Using the ‘chakravyuh’ metaphor to say that an atmosphere of fear pervades the country, Rahul claimed that everybody trapped in it, including BJP MPs, farmers and workers.
“Thousands of years ago in Haryana, in Kurukshetra, six people killed a youth, Abhimanyu, in a ‘chakravyuh’. A ‘chakravyuh’ has violence and fear. Abhimanyu was trapped and killed in the ‘chakravyuh’,” Rahul said.
His reference was to the Mahabharat legend according to which Abhimanyu was killed in a ‘chakravyuh’ — a multi-tiered maze and formation — in which he was trapped.
“You build a ‘chakravyuh’, and we break the ‘chakravyuh’,” Rahul said, asserting that the Opposition would break this cycle by carrying out a caste census.
“In the 21st century, another ‘chakravyuh’ has been prepared, it is in the form of the lotus and the Prime Minister (Narendra Modi) wears the symbol on his chest. What was done with Abhinmanyu is being done with youth, women, farmers and MSMEs,” he said.
The Congress leader said the ‘chakravyuh’ that has captured India has three forces — the idea of monopoly capital and concentration of financial power; institutions and agencies such as the CBI, ED and IT department; and the political executive.
These three together are at the heart of the ‘chakravyuh’ and have devastated this country, he said.
(With PTI inputs)
