Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman in Lok Sabha targetted Congress leader Rahul Gandhi over his retaliation on the ‘Andolan Jeevi’ remark by the Prime Minister a few days back.
Earlier Rahul Gandhi in his Rajya Sabha speech accused the Modi government of crony capitalism, ignoring the poor and defaming the farmers in the nation by he three newly passed farm laws.
Sitharaman quoted Rahul Gandhi by saying that he is becoming ‘doomsday man for India’.
“Who are our cronies? Our cronies are the common ‘janta’ (people) of this country,” Ms Sitharaman said in the Lok Sabha.
“Where are the cronies? They’re hiding probably in the shadow of that party which has been rejected by the people (a reference to the Congress). The shadows who were invited to even develop a port… they were invited. No open tenders, no global tenders,” she continued.
“… these two tendencies of the Congress… makes it clear their belief in a democratic system is finished… he (Rahul Gandhi) is probably becoming a doomsday man for India,” she added.
“I wanted to know from the Congress why it took a U-turn on the farm laws but no reply came,” she said, adding that Mr Gandhi had failed to explain why Congress governments in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh did not waive farm loans, as promised in their manifestos.
“It would have been nice if he (Mr Gandhi) who talked about “hum doh hamhare doh” also talked about returning damaads returning land.. but didn’t say anything about this,” she said, referring to investigations into land deals involving Robert Vadra, Congress chief Sonia Gandhi’s son-in-law.
“The PM SVANidhi Yojana, for those who constantly accuse us of dealing with cronies, doesn’t go to cronies. Damaads get land in states which are governed by some parties – Rajasthan, Haryana once upon a time,” she said.
She also criticised Gandhi’s understanding of the new farm laws which centre says will help the farmers and will allow them to sell the products at the their own price.