A day after Prime Minister Narendra Modi accused Rahul Gandhi of not sitting in Parliament and listening, the Congress leader retorted that central agencies like the Enforcement Directorate (ED) and the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) do not scare him and questioned why he should listen to him.
"In an interview yesterday, Modi Ji said 'Rahul doesn't listen'. Yes, he is right. Rahul Gandhi does not listen to Narendra Modi. Did you understand what he meant?" Gandhi said during a public rally in Uttarakhand on Thursday, 10 February.
"It meant that ED, CBI pressure does not work on Rahul and he does not back down. He thinks he can scare everybody with ED, CBI. I am not scared. Instead, I feel like laughing looking at his pride," Gandhi added.
Repeating what he said in his Parliament speech, Gandhi further said, "In my Lok Sabha speech, I talked about two Indias that PM Modi is making. One India belongs to the industrialists, and the other India belongs to the poor, the unemployed. In the first India, you can get anything if you are an industrialist. In my speech, I also talked about China."
"Then PM Modi gave a long speech in which he said wrong things about the Congress, about me, which he generally does. Then yesterday he gave another interview. Have you watched that? I don't know," he added.
"Narendra Modi blames us for arranging for buses for migrants. That was not our job. We were not in power. Narendra Modi Ji does not do his own work and then blames us. You could not provide employment to people. In fact, you rendered people jobless," Gandhi added.
Gandhi also said the BJP changed its chief ministers in Uttarakhand as they were corrupt and added that the saffron party replaced one thief with another.
What Did PM Modi Say on Wednesday?
Speaking to ANI in an interview on the eve of the Uttar Pradesh Assembly polls, PM Modi on Wednesday, 9 February, had responded to Gandhi's attack on his government for not issuing a clarification on issues like the India-China border dispute and rising unemployment in Parliament.
"I have given facts on every subject and spoken on every subject on the basis of facts. On some subjects, our external affairs ministry and defence ministry have given detailed answers, and wherever it was necessary, I had also spoken," he said.
"How do I reply to a person who does not listen and does not sit in the House?" he added.
(With inputs from ANI, PTI and Hindustan Times.)
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