Bhubaneswar, Oct 26 Defending Congress chief Mallikarjun Kharge’s remarks on Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the party’s Odisha president Bhakta Charan Das on Monday said “change is the law of the world”.
Kharge sparked controversy on Sunday by saying “Modi ka baap bhi jayega” (even Modi’s father will go), in response to an audience member who asserted that the prime minister would not go anywhere.
Asked about the remark, Das said, “Change is the law of the world.”
Former state Congress chief Jaydev Jena, responding to a question about Kharge’s remarks, said the party president was responding to a comment from the audience and did not intend to refer to anyone’s father.
Das, meanwhile, accused Modi of mocking rather than acknowledging former PM Rajiv Gandhi’s admission about welfare fund leakages, questioning how corruption worth hundreds of crores of rupees could continue to surface if every rupee allocated now reached beneficiaries.
“Late Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi never shied away from revealing the truth. It is regrettable that merchants of lies chose to mock, rather than commend, the late Gandhi’s candid admission that only 15 paise out of every rupee sent from Delhi actually reached the people,” he said.
“If the full amount of funds allocated for development or welfare initiatives were truly reaching the beneficiaries directly, how is it that reports of corruption involving hundreds of crores of rupees continue to dominate media headlines every single day,” he asked.
Modi, while addressing a gathering at the inauguration of the RBI’s Data Centre and Cybersecurity Training Institute in Bhubaneswar on Sunday, referred to the former prime minister’s statement on welfare fund leakages to highlight the difference between the previous system and the current government’s direct benefit transfer mechanism.
“From the very soil of Odisha, a former Prime Minister of the country once said that one rupee is sent from Delhi, but only 15 paise reaches the public. This was a statement by the prime minister,” Modi had said.
“Today, one rupee leaves Delhi, and the entire rupee reaches the bank account of every beneficiary. This was possible only because of the approximately 59-60 crore Jan Dhan accounts opened across the country,” he had asserted.
The Congress leader claimed that the BJP government had benefited from the information technology revolution initiated under Gandhi but had failed to manage the digital transformation effectively.
“Conversely, due to the BJP’s failure to properly manage this digital revolution, numerous banking frauds have occurred under their watch, resulting in the siphoning off of thousands of crores,” Das alleged.
(PTI News)
