Mumbai: Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Thursday took on Prime Minister Narendra Modi over his apology after a statue of the warrior king Shivaji at Malvan in Maharashtra’s Sindhudurg district collapsed last month.
Gandhi, who was in Sangli for a Congress party programme, said the collapse of the statue was an “insult” to the memory of Chhatrapati Shivaji and that the PM should apologise to every person in Maharashtra for the incident.
“I want to know for which reason did he apologise; there could be three reasons…,” Gandhi said. “First reason could be that the PM is saying that he did a mistake and that he should not have given a contract (to build the statue) to an RSS person and perhaps that the contract should have been given on merit. The second reason for his apology could be that there was corruption while giving the contract for making the statue,” he said, adding: “The third reason … could be that they made a Shivaji Maharaj statue, but you didn’t even bother to ensure that it stands.”
Gandhi made the comments after unveiling a statue of late Congress leader Patangrao Kadam.
Gandhi said Modi should also apologise for implementing a “flawed GST” as well as demonetisation.
He said Manipur was witnessing a “civil war kind of situation” but the Prime Minister had not bothered to visit the state. “He cannot go there because the BJP guys have lit the fire in Manipur,” he said.
People in constitutional positions are not appointed on merit under the current government, the Congress leader said. “They want to finish off the Constitution, they put their people in wherever they want, in the Election Commission, legal system, bureaucracy – they don’t look at merit. In today’s Hindustan, if you are RSS, then you have merit. If you don’t belong to the RSS, there is no place in these organisations for you,” he alleged.
