PM Modi attacks Gandhi family, Priyanka says not scared

NEW DELHI: Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched a scathing attack on the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty on Wednesday just as Congress general secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra undertook her first tour of Varanasi, his Lok Sabha constituency.

The PM did so through a detailed blog in which he held the Nehru-Gandhi family responsible for insulting institutions. Vadra, who is Congress in-charge for East Uttar Pradesh, later sought to counter the PM with a similar charge.

“From the press to Parliament. From soldiers to free speech. From the Constitution to the courts. Institutional insult is the Congress way. Everyone is wrong, only the Congress is correct,” wrote Modi in a sharp attack on the Congress’s first family.


“As you go to vote- remember the past and how one family's desire for power cost the nation so greatly. If they could do it then, they can surely do it now. Eternal vigilance remains the price of liberty. Let us stay vigilant and work hard to strengthen the intuitions given to us by the makers of our Constitution.”

Modi brought up former PM Indira Gandhi for promulgating Emergency and interfering with the judiciary.

“The Emergency made the nation a prison overnight. Even to express was to commit sin…It was Mrs. Indira Gandhi who called for a ‘committed judiciary’, which seeks to make the courts more loyal to a family than to the Constitution,” wrote the PM.

He also recalled how Rajiv Gandhi once called the Planning Commission, then led by Manmohan Singh, “a bunch of jokers”.

While attacking former Congress president Sonia Gandhi and current Congress president Rahul Gandhi, Modi wrote: “A policy decision taken by no less than the Union Cabinet was torn into pieces by someone who was not a member of any ministry and that too, in a press conference. The NAC was created as a body parallel to the Prime Minister’s Office. And then, Congress talks about institutions?”

The response over PM’s attack came from Vadra who was in Varanasi as a part of her threeday Ganga Yatra from Prayagraj to Varanasi. “BJP has systematically attacked every institution in last 5 years including the media. PM should stop thinking people are fools and understand that they see through this,” she said.

The PM, according to Vadra, was trying to intimidate those who were speaking against him. “We are not scared. We will not be scared. We would continue to fight his oppression.”

In her yatra over the past three days, Vadra has kept her focus on directly taking on the PM. Now with the PM responding, a shoots of a new contest between PM Modi and Priyanka Gandhi Vadra are set to spice up the 2019 elections.

“The 70 years rant has an expiry date,” She told media persons at Mirzapur on Tuesday. “They are in power for the past five years. They are in power in the state too and no work has been done.”

While addressing a rally in Chunar, Mirzapur on Tuesday, Vadra said: “They talk of patriotism. Is there anyone here who is not a patriot? You are patriots who will save this country from those people.”

PM Modi in his speeches makes a constant reference to pre-dominant Congress rule of 70 years in a bid to compare his performance of the last five years.