Senior Congress leader Milind Deora and the Congress candidate from South Mumbai constituency has released an ad campaign appealing for votes. In the video, one can see several industrialists and small business owners endorse Deora’s candidature. Among the industrialists endorsing Deora, is Mukesh Ambani. Interestingly, Rahul Gandhi has been basing his entire campaign on attacking Prime Minister Narendra Modi for “working for industrialists” like the Ambanis.
From small shopkeepers to large industrialists – for everyone, South Mumbai means business.
We need to bring businesses back to Mumbai and make job creation for our youth a top priority.#MumbaiKaConnection pic.twitter.com/d4xJnvhyKr
— Milind Deora (@milinddeora) April 17, 2019
While Milind Deora, senior Congress leader is using the endorsement of industrialists to appeal for votes, Rahul Gandhi has been going hammer and tongs against the Prime Minister, asserting that PM Modi is not concerned about the poor, but only the industrialists.
Rahul Gandhi has repeatedly asserted that Prime Minister Modi has waived off loans of several industrialists but won’t do the same for farmers. He has constantly muddied the water by lying about the difference between ‘write off’ and ‘loan waiver’ in order to mislead people into believing that the Modi government has forgone all debts by industrialists.
In November 2018, Rahul Gandhi had said, “Modiji gave Rs 3.5 lakh crore to the 15 richest people of the country in the last 4-5 years. For running MGNREGA scheme in the country, an amount of Rs 35,000 crore is needed yearly but he waived loans worth 10 times that amount of 15 select industrialists”.
While the amounts and the number of industrialists mentioned by Rahul Gandhi keeps changing with every speech, he has maintained his erroneous attack against the Prime Minister. His attempt has been, perhaps, to try and create an image of himself that sits well with the poor population of India while chiding and deriding industrialists constantly.
While on the one hand, Rahul Gandhi has mounted an overall attack against industrialists, he has also gone after the Anil Ambani personally several times in connection with the Rafale case. The Rafale deal has been given a clean chit by the Supreme Court, and yet, Rahul Gandhi has insinuated wrong-doing on the part of the Prime Minister and insinuated repeatedly that Anil Ambani benefitted wrongly in the Rafale deal.
It is thus intriguing that while Congress president Rahul Gandhi has derided industrialists and the symbiotic relationship that any government would aim to share with the business class, Milind Deora, a senior Congress leader and a close aide of Rahul Gandhi has turned to these very industrialists for an endorsement and used their word to appeal for votes.
The hypocrisy displayed by the Congress party doesn’t end with Milind Deora’s vote appeal. Rahul Gandhi’s industrialist jibe has often boomeranged against him. In 2010 when the Congress government was in power, Mukesh Ambani had reportedly said that “Congress to ab apni dukaan hai”. BJP had used this to attack Congress and Rahul Gandhi and also revealed that it was in the Congress tenure, that several industrialists got loans ‘waived’ and exorbitant loans were also granted.
Congress’ hypocrisy is furthered by the fact that while Rahul Gandhi attacks industrialists on the whole and Anil Ambani in particularly, in the Reliance Telecom – Erriccson case, it was senior Congress leader Kapil Sibal who was representing Ambani. In fact, Rahul Gandhi had used the very case where Ambani was represented by Kapil Sibal to further lies about the Modi government and the Armed Forces.
Milind Deora’s vote appeal that uses industrialists’ endorsement is just another feather in the hypocritical Congress cap with the pack led by none other than Congress President Rahul Gandhi himself.
