Congress president Rahul Gandhi launched a frontal attack on PM Modi and CM Naveen Patnaik on Wednesday, “Modi gave you Rafale (scam), we will give you minimum guaranteed income. No power in the world can prevent us from giving minimum income support to the poor. This is not a promise like giving Rs 15 lakh or providing 2 crore jobs.” at a public rally at Bhawanipatna in Kalahandi district of the state.
He alleged that PM Modi and CM Patnaik work in tandem to “snatch people land and give it to their industrialist friends and said Patnaik is a “remote controlled" by PM Modi.
Gandhi said, “In the budget, they (the BJP) claimed to have taken historic step of providing assistance to the farmers. But what they offered is Rs 3.5 per person per day in a farmer family. They promised only Rs 17 a day to a family of farmers.”
The Congress president promised to ensure minimum assured income to every poor in the country if he is voted to power in the upcoming Lok Sabha elections. He said, “The Congress had been working on the scheme for past five-six months.”
He alleged that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government destroyed “all the schemes the Congress-led UPA government gave you”. He said, “We gave you MNREGA, Modi destroyed it. We gave you RTI (Right to Information), he destroyed it, whatever we gave you, he destroyed it.”
The BJD government is in Odisha for 18 years, the tribal youths of the state don’t find jobs. Odisha does not offer them jobs, their land is snatched, jungle is taken away, but if they want jobs, they have to go to other places like Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Delhi, he added.
This was the second visit of Rahul Gandhi to Odisha this year. Earlier, he visited the state on January 25.