Janjivan Bureau / Shillong : Congress president Rahul Gandhi today fired his “suit-boot ki sarkar” salvo at Prime Minister Narendra Modi afresh, saying he was always found in the company of people attired in suits and not those that are poor.
Unruffled after being attacked by the Meghalaya unit of the BJP over the price of the black jacket he wore yesterday at a concert here, Gandhi said, “You will not see him (PM) hug a poor person, talk to a poor person or even engage with a poor person. You will see him with others.
“There is a particular distance he maintains with the poor people which he does not with Mr Obama or others,” he told journalists.
“The fact of the matter is that he (Modi) is still a suit-boot person. He has not done anything….,” Gandhi said.
The Congress president said the prime minister had promised to create 2 crore jobs a year but failed to achieve the target.
Will simplify GST structure after coming to power
Congress President Rahul Gandhi on Wednesday said that the structure of the Goods and Service Tax (GST) would undergo changes if his party came back to power at the Centre in 2019.
Addressing a programme at St. Edmund’s College, Rahul said, “If we come back to power in the Centre, we are going change the structure of GST and simplify it”.
“We had proposed a different GST structure. The products that common people use should be out of the tax bracket and there should be only one layer of tax. But, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) told us to mind our own business and said that we were going ahead with our own version of GST”, he added.
Rahul launched an attack at the BJP, saying that the complicated structure of GST was harming the common people across the country.
“The BJP launched the GST at midnight. It was pushed out hastily. Five different tax layers is a complicated structure. The GST has been launched without testing, causing severe pain to the common people. Millions of people are losing their jobs every day,” Rahul said.
The Congress President criticised the BJP’s attitude of ignoring small and medium businesses and were supporting only businessmen in the country.
“The BJP’s focus on 10-15 business people is totally wrong. Big businesses get a lot of support. But, when we compare it with small and medium businesses, there is no sense. Small and medium businesses do not get that support. The big businesses are only getting benefitted from the political system”, Rahul added.
“We believe the support and organising of small and medium businesses. They need that financial support from the banking system”, he continued.
The Congress President is in Shillong to kick off the election campaign of the party in poll-bound Meghalaya.
The polling for the 60-member state assembly will take place on February 27 along with Nagaland. The results will be declared on March 3.
In an apparent retort to Rahul Gandhi’s suit-boot ki sarkar jibe, the BJP had claimed the Congress President wore a jacket worth USD 995 at a concert oragnised by his party in the poll-bound state yesterday.
“So @OfficeOfRG, soot(pun intended!)-boot ki sarkar with black money fleeced from Meghalayan State exchequer by rampant corruption? Instead of singing away our woes, you could have given a report card of your inefficient govt in Meghalaya! Your indifference mocks us!,” the BJP’s Meghalaya unit tweeted.
The party’s state unit also tweeted an image of a jacket similar to the one Gandhi wore having a price tag of USD 995 (little over Rs 63,000).
The BJP, which intends to give a tough fight to the ruling Congress in the Meghalaya Assembly elections, also accused the Congress of distracting voters by organising a soiree.
“Rock concert distraction tactics by the @OfficeOfRG to take away focus of Meghalayan voters from real issues on ground! A prince can fuss over ‘fuddy-duddy chopper’ rides & cancel his Tura trip, but ever wondered how people in Meghalaya travel,” the BJP tweeted.
Gandhi met Church representatives earlier today in the Christian dominated state where elections to the 60-member Assembly would be held on February 27.
Two Churches in Meghalaya recently turned down Rs 70 crore assistance announced by the Centre.
There are many different visions, missions and ideas in the country and all of them should have a voice, Gandhi said.
“There is tremendous anger and discomfort among a lot of people and they believe that this country is made up of a million perspectives, and to force only one perspective is not right,” Gandhi said.
