Congress President Sonia Gandhi on Sunday slammed Prime Minister Narendra Modi and AAP chief Arvind Kejriwal, saying one was a ‘pracharak’ and the other a ‘dharnebaaj’, as she asked voters to save Delhi from those who make only ‘hollow promises’.
"While one party has a pracharak, who only does ‘prachar’ the other just has a dharnebaaj, who is all the time busy organising dharnas. Delhi needs good governance and not false promises... the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Aam Aadmi Party can only talk big and make hollow promises.
"There is a need to be careful of those doing politics of pretension. The country is not run by mere slogans," she said. Addressing her first election rally for the February 7 Delhi polls at Meethapur here near Badarpur, the Congress chief accused the Modi government of "weakening" the schemes initiated by the previous United Progressive Alliance dispensation, including on food security and land acquisition, and doing nothing to check corruption despite the ‘golden promises’ made during the Lok Sabha polls.
She also raked up the issue of communal violence that took place in some parts of Delhi before the assembly election dates were announced and alleged that it was being done to
‘capture power’ in the state.
"There are some forces which cause incidents like what happened in Trilokpuri and Dilshad Garden. Such forces will have to be defeated which spread the politics of hatred," she said as she appealed to people to strengthen secular forces.
Gandhi said that after the assembly polls of 2013 in Delhi threw up a hung mandate, Congress had supported AAP in forming the government here, thinking they will deliver on their promise of making Delhi a better place.
"But they could not run the government...and fled," she said. "I ask them (AAP) whether it was not their job to fight corruption and provide cheap water and electricity. And then the other party (BJP) kept on delaying elections in Delhi and continued with its rule here in the name of President's rule," she said.
While hailing the previous Congress-led UPA dispensation for taking many "social and revolutionary steps", Gandhi said that the Modi government is snatching away the rights of the people by "weakening" those schemes.
Alleging that this was the ‘reality of their hollow promises’ she said that while the UPA had brought the Food Security Act, "The Modi government is trying to bring such changes in it which will limit the percentage of beneficiaries from 67 per cent to 40 per cent of the population."
Addressing farmers, she said that those who had showed them ‘golden dreams’ had now deprived them of even fertilisers and seeds while they were even less likely to receive proper prices for their produce.
"Why did we bring the Land Acquisition Act? We did it to ensure that no one forcibly takes away the land of farmers. What did the Modi government do? It opened the route for anybody to capture farmers' land by bringing in the Ordinance.
"We had worked hard to give the country the RTI Act, but those who talked of a corruption-free government have kept the post of CIC Commissioner vacant and given a free hand to corrupt people," Gandhi said as she sought to warn people against voting the BJP to power in Delhi.
She said that while Modi had made big promises, she would like to ask him "where is the black money from which every citizen was supposed to get Rs 15 lakh each".
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