Former Congress president Sonia Gandhi and senior leader Mallikarjun Kharge at a rally in Vijaypura on Tuesday | D Hemanth
VIJAYAPURA: Former Congress president Sonia Gandhi joined forces with son Rahul Gandhi on Tuesday to take on Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Addressing her first and only election meeting in Karnataka, Sonia Gandhi told a crowd gathered in the Lingayat heartland of Vijayapura that Modi is a good orator but speeches can’t fill stomachs. Mocking Modi for his “hollow promises”, she said: “Modi is proud that he is a good orator and speaks like an actor. But, speeches can't fill stomachs. Speeches can't cure illness and we need hospitals. Speeches alone cannot lead to women empowerment or generate employment or provide relief to farmers."
Sonia questioned whether the country has seen such a PM who spoke all the time, "but never on issues that concerned the nation."
On Modi's recent remarks on former defence minister Krishna Menon and General Thimmayya, she said that the country was shocked that the Prime Minister was lying to the people of the State by playing with history. "He is using freedom fighters as pawns in a game of chess," she said.
She accused the Centre of discriminating against Karnataka while it was undergoing a major agararian crisis due to consecutive droughts. Modi gave thousands of crores to BJP-ruled states. However, he even declined to meet the Chief Minister of Karnataka who had visited Delhi to discuss the crisis. By doing so, she said, Modi has insulted the farmers of the state.
While Congress is working towards Vikas, the only job of Modi government in the past four years has been to discontinue all the developmental projects taken up by the Congress in the past, she said.
