Vadodara: Congress leader Shashi Tharoor on Saturday said Prime Minister Narendra Modi was coming up with imaginary ideas regarding the Congress’ manifesto to attack the party.
The situation today was such that “the very idea of Indian democracy that our forefathers fought for is in peril”, he told reporters here.
“Our manifesto is a strong document with a vision for the future. Modi is making up imaginary ideas that are not in our manifesto and attacking us for that. We too can come up with imaginary things about Modi but we are not doing that,” he said.
“We believe Modi’s own record is bad enough and there is enough to attack. He, however, has nothing to say against us except imaginary things which we have not claimed in our manifesto,” he added.
The issue of Muslim reservation was brought up by the PM but there was no mention of the term “Muslim” in Congress’ manifesto, Tharoor claimed.
“He said we are going to snatch away the houses and buffaloes of people and give it to Muslims. There is no such reference in the manifesto. He says we are going to take away mangalsutras and gold and give it to Muslims,” he said.
Calling such statements from the ruling side as “utter nonsense”, Tharoor asked them to “campaign on the basis of real issues”.
In some states Muslims have been included in the OBC category, but that is a state policy which the Congress has not advocated for national reservation, the Thiruvananthapuram MP said.
“This is a wilful distortion of existing reality to suggest the Congress wants to do something by winning the Lok Sabha election. Lok Sabha election is for national government and not for state government,” he said.
The PM has been using language that no one would have dreamt someone on the post would ever do, he said.
The country has seen how democratic institutions established by Dr Bhimrao Ambedkar’s Constitution have been hollowed out by the BJP, which was also attempting to reduce the Parliament to ” a notice board or a rubber stamp”, he alleged.
As per the Constitution, the government is responsible to the people, but this dispensation has only worked for a few, he said in a swipe at the BJP.
“We are concerned this government has not kept any of its promises made in the last 10 years. They promised two crore jobs, but since 2014 we have seen a net loss of one crore jobs rather than an increase,” he said.
“Today we are in a situation where the very idea of Indian democracy that our forefathers fought for is in peril. We have a government in Delhi for the last 10 years that has seriously challenged every basic principle for which the freedom struggle was fought,” Tharoor asserted.
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