PM Modi should stop criticising Congress, he is treading on Nehru’s path: Shiv Sena

Shiv Sena MP Sanjay Raut. (Express photo/File)

Shiv Sena MP Sanjay Raut said in party mouthpiece Saamana that Prime Minister Narendra Modi should stop criticising the Congress. Raut said Modi appears to be following a course set by former Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru.

“What is the current ‘Modi government’ doing? It hasn’t done anything new. From Nehru to Rahul Gandhi, it is criticising them every day. It says everyday that the policies of the Nehru-Gandhi families and the Congress’s looting culture have destroyed the country, and that we have become poor. In reality, Modi is treading on the path of Nehru. The BJP is struggling to retain what the Congress has sown. It is okay that the British and the Congress looted us, but the loot hasn’t stopped,” Raut said in his weekly column Rokhthok.

Raut claimed the government’s expenses are almost matched by the expenses on Modi’s foreign tours. “People were weary of the Congress regime and brought the Modi government into power, but their hopes are over now. The people have begun saying that the previous government was better. The data on poverty and unemployment remain unchanged. Expenses on defence are increasing. The government’s expenses and the expenses of the Prime Minister’s foreign tours are equal,” he wrote.

Raut also commented on the BJP’s election campaigns. “The development agenda was missing from the BJP’s campaigning in the Gujarat polls and this has been repeated in the Karnataka campaign,” he said.

He wrote how the late Bal Thackeray, in the 1950s, in his cartoons about Nehru depicted the former Prime Minister as being in love with the camera and having “pretentious sympathy” for the poor. Raut said Modi is like Nehru in his sentiments about the poor and his love for the camera.