New Delhi: Hitting back at Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge said “a desperate and frustrated Prime Minister, who has failed to perform anything meaningful in the past 12 years, has turned a formal address to the nation into a political speech full of slander and outright lies”. In a post on The
ICC spokesman Jairam Ramesh said Modi should apologize for “his shameless and deceitful attempt to push a perverse demarcation proposal in the name of women”. His “niyat” (intention) was never saaf (clean). Ramesh said Prime Minister Narendra Modi should answer why the Nari Shakti Vandan Adhiniyam, passed in September 2023, was notified late night on April 16 after a delay of 30 months.“His talk about Mahira Samman is sheer hypocrisy considering the way he has conducted himself throughout his life. The Prime Minister’s attempt to weaken our democracy and federalism in the Lok Sabha yesterday was exactly the attack on the Constitution that the Prime Minister had anticipated when he called for ‘400 paar’ ahead of the 2024 LS elections,” Ramesh said. A Congress spokesman said the prime minister’s “attempts to invoke the legacy of the framers will only create resentment about his dishonesty”. He also refuted Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s assertion that the Congress was opposed to Jan Dhan-Aadhar-Mobile and the Goods and Services Tax, saying the two policies were “entirely Congress creations”. Ramesh said, “The Prime Minister at the end of his speech said that there is a ‘waqt ka intezaar’ for women’s reservation. There is no need to pass ‘muhurat’ to give Indian women their due rights. Congress has asked the Prime Minister to introduce a bill in Parliament tomorrow to implement women’s reservation within the existing structure of the Lok Sabha.”
