The Congress party ignored the nation to “serve one family”, said Prime Minister Narendra Modi in Parliament on Tuesday as some Opposition MPs shouted slogans against him. “This is your character. You divided India. Even after 70 years of Independence, 125 crore people of India continue to suffer because of the poison you sowed. Not a single day passes when people of India are not punished for your sins,” Modi said about the principal Opposition party. He was speaking in the Lok Sabha on the Motion of Thanks to the President’s address. “For decades, one party devoted all their energies to serving one family. The interests of the nation were looked over just for the interests of one family,” he said about the Nehru-Gandhi family, three members of which have been prime ministers of the country.
Modi said had Sardar Vallabhai Patel, not Jawaharlal Nehru, been the first prime minister of India “entire Kashmir would have been ours”. “How can one of the leaders say India got a democracy due to Pandit Nehru and the Congress Party? Is this their reading of India’s history? What arrogance is this!” Some MPs shouted slogans demanding a financial package for Andhra Pradesh, as was promised when Telangana was carved out of it during the fag end of the United Progress Alliance (UPA) government. Modi said the Congress, which led the UPA, “hastily” divided the southern state for political gains.
“When we speak about creating new states, we remember the manner in which Atal Bihari Vajpayee created Uttarakhand, Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh. He showed how farsighted decision making is done,” Modi said. The Telugu Desam Party (TDP), which rules Andhra Pradesh and is the Bharatiya Janata Party main southern ally in the National Democratic Alliance (NDA), has been pressing the Modi government for a financial package to manage its finances after the state was split. On Sunday, the TDP announced it not pull out of the NDA for now but build pressure on it in and outside Parliament.
