MP and former Union minister Shashi Tharoor has accused Prime Minister Narendra Modi of forgetting his ‘Ache Din’ slogan of 2014 elections and confining himself to ‘Ache Bhaashan’ slogan betraying all the sections of society.
At a press conference here, Mr. Tharoor recalled the famous slogan of late Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri — Jai Jawan-Jai Kisan — and said Mr. Modi has betrayed both the jawan by diluting one rank one pension and the kisan by not extending the minimum support price.
The UPA government used to get ₹ 3.92 per litre of petrol as taxes in its kitty while the Modi government gets ₹ 19.48 per litre. Similarly, the domestic cooking cylinder was ₹ 398 in UPA and it is ₹ 840 now. The country is being ruled by only slogans.
Terming the NDA Government as ‘anti-national’, Mr. Tharoor said it was exposed in the Rafale deal where the jets were reduced from 128 to 36 and that too at four times the price of the original deal for each aircraft. He also faulted the media for focussing on trivial issues while ignoring the compromises made on the Rafale deal by the NDA government.
‘Media to blame’
“Media too should take blame,” he said adding that the present government was determined to destroy all democratic institutions.
Mr. Tharoor said Telangana caretaker Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao was a surrogate of Mr. Modi and said he had supported the irresponsible and disastrous rule of Mr. Modi all along. There are too many collusions between Mr. Modi and Mr. Chandrasekhar Rao with the latter supporting the disaster demonetisation and the ill-conceived roll out of GST.
He said people across the country and in Telangana paid the price for electing BJP and TRS respectively and asked the people to undo their mistake now. The great strength of a democracy is its self-correction mode wherein people could undo their mistake. Both Mr. Modi and Mr. Rao’s speeches were like good at diagnosing the problems but utter failures in effective prescription and delivery of medicine.
Hiding information
He said Dharna Chowk in Hyderabad had been removed to suppress any kind of protest. Calling Right to Information Act as an achievement of the UPA government, he said TRS government had reportedly placed over 30,000 government orders in Confidential Category to hide information from the people. Similarly, he said no respect has been shown to other Central Acts like Land Acquisition Act to deny rightful compensation to farmers. He said voters in Telangana must realise that a vote for the TRS is a vote for the BJP.