Rahul Gandhi attacks Modi govt, says RSS men sitting in every ministry

Congress president Rahul Gandhi on Wednesday accused the Narendra Modi government of “disrespecting” and “demolishing” various institutions by having RSS men “sitting in every ministry and giving orders.”

Interacting with the city’s traders here as part of his Karnataka campaign ahead of the polls, Gandhi said if voted to power, the Congress would free these institutions from the RSS control.

“I don’t know if you all know that in every single minister’s office, there is an RSS man sitting and giving orders. So what can you expect... nothing but disrespecting the institutions. The banking system of the country has been demolished by having this structure,” he said.

“Who is Nirav Modi and Mehul Choksey? These are the people who arise when you don’t respect the financial institutions like the Reserve Bank of India.”

“We are also seeing Piyush Goyal (with scam tumbling out),” he said.

Fugitive diamond merchant Modi and his uncle Choksey are at the centre of the Punjab National Bank fraud. Gandhi had on Tuesday targeted Union Minister Piyush Goyal for his alleged links to the promoter of a company in default of Rs 650 crore.

Gandhi said former RBI Governor Raghuram Rajan had advised against demonetisation. He claimed that the chief economic advisor, the Union finance minister and the entire Cabinet were unaware of the demonetisation plans of the Prime Minister.

“The entire cabinet was locked up prior to the demonetisation. They (Cabinet ministers) were not let out of the room,” he alleged.

Gandhi continued his scathing attack on the Modi government on social media, where he took a swipe at the rising prices of petrol and diesel, posting a video that dubbed the Prime Minister as “king of misinformation” on the issue.

The video shows a clip of Modi talking about reducing petrol and diesel prices at a rally interspersed with images of Bollywood actor Salman Khan bursting into peals of laughter. “The poor and the middle class bear the brunt of rising fuel prices. In this video, our PM is quite obviously talking about some other country,” Gandhi tweeted, using “#PeTrolled” as the hashtag.

While international crude oil prices have been on the decline, the rates of petrol and diesel have been rising due to heavy taxes by the government, Gandhi and the Congress have said in their attacks against the government and the prime minister.

Answering questions from the audience at his Davanagere event, Gandhi said Congress would solve the unemployment problem by encouraging small and medium scale businesses in construction, agriculture and other sectors.

He also said China is successful in creating jobs because its government imparts skill training to its workforce. “In Modiji’s government, there is no talk on (imparting) skills,” he said.

Gandhi said banks should give loans also to small and medium scale entrepreneurs, but this benefit is being usurped by 15 big names in Indian business. “Anil Ambani has Rs 45,000 crore of loan and to help him, theRafale (fighter jet) contract was given to him,” he said.

In a letter to Congress leader Randeep Surjewala, Ambani, however, had refuted the allegation saying that Dassault’s decision to choose Reliance as its joint venture partner was an independent agreement between the two corporate private sector entities and the two governments had nothing to do with it.