BHAGALPUR (Bihar), Apr 20: Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Saturday charged the BJP-RSS combine and a handful of billionaires with posing a threat to democracy and the country’s Constitution, to which “Dalits, tribals and the poor owe all that they have”.
Addressing an election rally at Bhagalpur, his first in Bihar, Gandhi also drew a contrast with the previous UPA government headed by his party, claiming the amount of debt written off under the Narendra Modi regime was “25 times the farmers’ loans we had waived”.
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“I would like to give you some startling statistics. The country has 22 individuals who own wealth that is equivalent to the holdings of 70 crore people. There are 70 crore people in the country who are surviving on less than Rs 100 a day,” claimed Gandhi.
The former Congress president claimed that “Modi has waived debts, of not more than 25 people, which amounts to about Rs 16 lakh crore”.
“Do you realise it is 25 times the amount of farmers’ loans we had waived? It may also be seen as equivalent to 25 years’ outlay for MGNREGA,” he said.
The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act 2005 (MGNREGA) is aimed at enhancing the livelihood security of households in rural areas of the country by providing at least 100 days of guaranteed wage employment in a financial year.
The INDIA bloc, led by the Congress, is committed to “distributing the wealth among the poor people”, Gandhi said.
He also said, if voted to power, the Congress would help the poor through schemes like ‘Mahalaxmi’ which proposes an annual dole of Rs one lakh, through direct cash transfer, to one female member of every poor family.
“The money will be remitted into the bank account of one person but will be utilised for the entire family”, he said.
Addressing the election rally, the Congress leader alleged, “Modi does not want the people to focus on the situation prevailing around them. He tries to distract you all through some means.”
“In any part of the country, you can see youngsters idling away hours on their smartphones, glued to social media sites. The reason is India has turned into a centre of unemployment. Demonetisation and faulty implementation of GST has hit job creation,” he said.
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