Modi stumps Sonia
CONGRESS President, Sonia Gandhi, kicked off the party’s campaign in Gujarat on October 3.
However, while Sonia Gandhi focussed her entire speech on targeting the BJP and Gujarat chief minister, she tactfully avoided Modi’s attack on her and the Centre demanding details of expenses on her foreign travels.
Refusing to divulge details Sonia Gandhi merely said that she was “not bothered about personal attacks on her”.
Quoting newspaper reports, Narendra Modi had claimed Rs 1,880 crore has been spent from the public exchequer for her foreign trips. While Modi had specifically talked about the expenses made on her foreign trips for treatment, the Congress and the Congress ministers deviated from the issue and kept claiming that Sonia Gandhi has not sought any reimbursement for medical bills from the Government. The Congress has been demanding an apology from Narendra Modi over the issue.
If the figure as stated is true then calculations indicate that in the last three years Sonia Gandhi during her foreign trips spent nearly Rs 1.7 crore per day. Ramesh Verma, the man who filed the application, has been claiming that so far he has received no reply to his request for information. Till the time of writing this report, no one has any idea what the true figure is.
The point to be noted here is Verma had filed the RTI request nearly two years back.
However, the application has been travelling between the Prime Minister’s Office and several ministries. It has been argued that Sonia Gandhi, being a Member of the Parliament who holds the Cabinet rank as chairman of the National Advisory Council, is certainly a public servant, and the question, since it involved public money, is as valid as any that can be asked under the RTI Act.
The Congress Party as expected lined up its leaders and ministers to defend Sonia Gandhi and attack Modi. As for the Gandhi clan, they never bother to reply to any charge levelled against them. Instead they ask their loyalists to defend the dynasty. Question here is the RTI Act has been projected by the Congress as one of the great achievements of the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government. In that case, why are the Gandhis and the UPA so reluctant to reveal the truth? Some Congress leaders speaking off the record say that the party has simply “walked into a trap laid by Modi on the expenses issue”. Some of them feel that it would have better for the party, government and the Gandhis to come out with the truth, instead of stonewalling the RTI query.
But all this is wishful thinking and whispers in the corridors of AICC. Not a single Congress leader has the courage to ask the Gandhis to face the truth. Within Congress its an undeclared and covert fascism. The Congress leaders like that of the Nazis have been trained to go down saving the ruler rather than stand upto him and say that he is wrong.
Slowly, but, steadily Modi is emerging out of Gujarat on the national scene. Even the global media has begun to appreciate his role as an administrator and pro-reforms man. While the global media has trashed UPA-II as the “most corrupt government in the history of independent India,” Modi has provided a clean government. Perhaps alarm bells have started ringing for UPA-II and the Congress, but then there’s not a single leader of stature, who can stand up to the Gandhis and say— “enough is enough.”
