Congress president Rahul Gandhi on Wednesday accused the NarendraModi government of “disrespecting” and “demolishing” various institutions by having RSS men “sitting in every ministry and giving orders.”
Interacting with the city’s traders here as part of his Karnataka campaign ahead of the polls, Gandhi said if voted to power, the Congress would free these institutions from the RSS control.
“I don’t know if you all know that in every single minister’s office, there is an RSS man sitting and giving orders. So what can you expect… nothing but disrespecting the institutions. The banking system of the country has been demolished by having this structure,” he said.
“Who is NiravModi and MehulChoksey? These are the people who arise when you don’t respect the financial institutions like the Reserve Bank of India.”
“We are also seeing PiyushGoyal (with scam tumbling out),” he said.
Fugitive diamond merchant Modi and his uncle Choksey are at the centre of the Punjab National Bank fraud. Gandhi had on Tuesday targeted Union Minister PiyushGoyal for his alleged links to the promoter of a company in default of Rs 650 crore.
Gandhi said former RBI Governor RaghuramRajan had advised against demonetisation. He claimed that the chief economic advisor, the Union finance minister and the entire Cabinet were unaware of the demonetisation plans of the Prime Minister.
“The entire cabinet was locked up prior to the demonetisation. They (Cabinet ministers) were not let out of the room,” he alleged.
Gandhi continued his scathing attack on the Modi government on social media, where he took a swipe at the rising prices of petrol and diesel, posting a video that dubbed the Prime Minister as “king of misinformation” on the issue.
The video shows a clip of Modi talking about reducing petrol and diesel prices at a rally interspersed with images of Bollywood actor Salman Khan bursting into peals of laughter. “The poor and the middle class bear the brunt of rising fuel prices. In this video, our PM is quite obviously talking about some other country,” Gandhi tweeted, using “#PeTrolled” as the hashtag.
While international crude oil prices have been on the decline, the rates of petrol and diesel have been rising due to heavy taxes by the government, Gandhi and the Congress have said in their attacks against the government and the prime minister.