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Khatkar Kalan
Taking Prime Minister Narendra Modi head-on over his remarks on former PM Rajiv Gandhi, Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh on Monday said he had hit the nadir of pettiness in his desperation to stay in power.
“Faced with imminent ouster, power-hungry Modi had lost all sense of decency and proportion in his election campaign, reducing it to a shameless mockery of public norms,” Capt Amarinder said, when asked by media persons to comment on the controversial remarks of the prime minister.
Modi’s remarks were outright despicable and reflective of his loathsome mindset, said the chief minister.
He added that the universal criticism the prime minister had faced over his comments showed that no sane individual or political institution that looked at elections as a serious democratic process could condone such malicious and baseless propaganda.
The entire Opposition had flayed Modi over his remarks – a clear indication that nobody wanted the election process of the country to be vilified in such a manner, he said.
Capt Amarinder, who was Rajiv’s senior in school, described the former prime minister as one of the most decent, humble and honest men he had ever known.
“Rajiv had nothing but unwavering love for India and would never, in his wildest imagination, have even thought of cheating the country or its people,” he added.
“But a thief thinks everybody else is also a thief, and a liar cannot envisage any person to be truthful,” the chief minister quipped, lashing out at Modi for “lying about a person who could no longer defend himself”.
“Rajiv sacrificed his life for the country, and our current prime minister, unmindful of the dignity of the chair he has been ensconced in for the past five years, deems it fit to drag the former PM’s name into what he has reduced to a shameful saga of low-level electioneering,” remarked Capt Amarinder.
Even Modi’s own party leader, former Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee, always had good things to say about Rajiv Gandhi, the chief minister noted, pointing to Vajpayee’s statement on how Rajiv had saved his life by including him in a delegation to UN so he could get his kidney problem treated in New York.
That was the kind of man Rajiv was, said Capt Amarinder, adding that Modi and his BJP were indulging in all kinds of falsehoods and cheap allegations against the Gandhi family out of sheer frustration as they had no positive agenda to fight the poll battle with.
Rajiv’s name was originally dragged into the Bofors case out of political motivation but he was exonerated by the Delhi High Court in February 2004, even before the UPA came to power, the chief minister said, adding that the then BJP government had failed to build a case against the former prime minister from 1998 to 2004.
