Nirmala Sitharaman was replying to a discussion on the budget in the Rajya Sabha
Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman - facing flak for a budget critics and opposition leaders say has ignored the poorer sections of the country - took a leaf out of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's book and fought back by targeting Congress MP Rahul Gandhi in her speech to the Rajya Sabha.
Ms Sitharaman dug out a 2013 comment - Mr Gandhi had called poverty a "state of mind", saying "... does not mean the scarcity of food, money or material things" and "... if one possesses self-confidence, then one can overcome poverty" - to criticise the Congress leader.
"Your former president said, 'Poverty does not mean scarcity of food, money, or material things. If one possesses self-confidence one can overcome it'. He also said, 'It's a state of mind'. I am not naming the person but we know who it is," Ms Sitharaman said.
"Please be clear... is this the 'poverty' you want me to address? The 'poverty of the mind'..." the Finance Minister continued amid shouts of disapproval from opposition MPs.
She quoted pre-2014 consumer price index figures (before the BJP came to power) of 9.1 per cent during the global financial crisis as against current levels of around six per cent post-Covid to declare "the opposition couldn't handle a lesser crisis".
For good measure Ms Sitharaman also attacked the Congress, drawing parallels between 'rahu kal' - an inauspicious period of the day, according to Hindu astrology - and the opposition party.
"'Rahu kal' is when the Congress is the government... when they say 'ladki hoon, lad sakti hoon' (a reference to the party's slogan for elections in UP and other states) but girls are not able to fight in Rajasthan," the Union Minister said.
"If there was a 'rahu kal' it belongs to a time when a sitting Prime Minister (PM Modi) brought a law and it was torn before the media hours before he was to meet the (former) US President (Donald Trump)," she continued, referring to opposition leaders tearing copies of the farm laws last year.
The Congress has claimed the Modi government is lashing out because it is "scared of Rahul Gandhi".
"The Finance Minister has given a statement on Rahul Gandhi in anger... We raised this question in the discussion on the budget that 27 crore people have gone below the poverty line because of this economic crisis..." the party's Rajya Sabha MP, Shaktisinh Gohil, said.
"We had put many questions regarding farmers, unemployment and the coronavirus crisis... but the finance minister did not answer our questions," he added.
Ms Sitharaman presented the 2022/23 Union Budget on February 1, after which Rahul Gandhi and other leaders slammed the document, calling it a "zero sum budget" with no provisions for the middle class or those from poor or deprived sections of society.
