Launching a sharp attack on Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) chief Raj Thackeray in his annual Gudi Padwa speech on Saturday said his tenure as PM had been “disastrous”. Raj said he was not averse to Congress president Rahul Gandhi becoming the prime minister. “Let Rahul become the PM and let us see,” he said.

“Right from Jawaharlal Nehru till now, people never decided the prime minister. If tomorrow Rahul Gandhi becomes the prime minister, we will also experiment with him,” said Raj. “We tried Modi, but he was disastrous. Let Rahul become the PM and let us see. If the country is fortunate enough, he will do some good thing.”

Raj accused Modi of emulating the policies of Adolf Hitler to run down his opponents. “Hitler used to muzzle the flow of information to the citizens. But fortunately (today) we have the social media, which was not the case previously. Similarly, anyone who criticised Hitler’s policies was declared as anti-national. There is no scope left to seek answers,” he added.

The MNS chief showed clippings of Harisal village in Amravati district, which was touted as the country’s first ideal digital village after being adopted by a software giant. “I had sent my party workers to study this village. They were just empty claims made the government and everything was a mess. Modi has only wasted his massive mandate,” said Raj.

He said he would conduct 10 large rallies, called ‘Reminder Rallies’, where he will remind the people of the promises made by Modi before 2014 and what he did while in power. “My campaign will definitely help the Congress-NCP (Nationalist Congress Party) but this has nothing to do with the Assembly polls,” he said.

First Published: Apr 07, 2019 00:49 IST