He's Learning To Speak, PM Quips. Mock Me All You Want, Says Rahul Gandhi

Prime Minister Narendra Modi today derided Rahul Gandhi using his "earthquake" comment and jibed that he is "learning how to make speeches", delivering a sharp comeback a day after the Congress Vice President accused him of receiving crores in kickbacks as Chief Minister of Gujarat.

"They have a youth leader; he is learning how to speak. In 2009, you couldn't even tell what is in this packet. Now we are finding out...Since the time he has learnt how to speak, I am the happiest," the Prime Minister said at an event in his constituency Varanasi in Uttar Pradesh.

"There would have been an earthquake had he not spoken... good that he has started speaking, we now know that there's no chance of an earthquake," he chuckled to his audience, without taking Mr Gandhi's name.

Hours later, Mr Gandhi shot back: "The PM didn't answer my questions but ridiculed me instead. Modiji, mock me all you want, but these are questions of the youth and the poor."

Last week, in the middle of acrimonious sparring over the notes ban, Mr Gandhi had declared at parliament that he would cause an "earthquake" by exposing what he called the "personal corruption of PM Modi". He chose PM Modi's home turf in Gujarat's Mehsana yesterday to allege that Income Tax raids had revealed that the "Sahara group paid off Narendra Modiji nine times in six months" starting 2013. He also said that computer records from a Birla Group official during raids in 2013 referred to bribes to "Gujarat CM".

If that was the quake, the BJP sneered, it was nothing new; it said the case was before the Supreme Court, which had not found merit in the allegations.

Mr Gandhi, who was also in UP, read out at a rally from documents that he alleges have details of payoffs to PM Modi months before he led his BJP to a landslide in the 2014 national election.

Reading again from the documents, Mr Gandhi challenged: "I will ask the same question again. Did you indulge in corruption or not?"