The PM said opposition parties can only guarantee corruption and scams. (File)
Answering a party worker's question on the opposition's unity efforts, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said today that BJP workers should not get angry at "such people" and pity them instead.
Addressing BJP's booth-level workers under the party's "Mera Booth Sabse Majboot" campaign in Madhya Pradesh, where elections are due later this year, PM Modi dismissed the mega opposition meet in Patna as a photo-op and said the opposition parties are looking even more nervous than they did in 2014 and 2019.
He said the parties are coming together because they "can see the bars of prison" and their common minimum programme is to escape action against corruption
"You remember the situation in 2014 and 2019, right? The parties staunchly opposed to the BJP were opposing us even then but we did not see the kind of nervousness we are seeing now. The parties are now prostrating in front of the same people that they used to call their enemies and curse viciously earlier," the Prime Minister said in Hindi.
"They don't have a choice now. Their nervousness makes it clear that the people of India have decided to bring the BJP back in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections. The BJP will win decisively again in 2024. This is why they have decided, a few months before the elections, to try and seize power by making false accusations and leading the people astray," PM Modi added.
Stating that the word "guarantee" is being popularised, the PM urged his party's workers to tell people what the guarantee being given by the opposition parties actually is. "The guarantee is of corruption and scams running into lakhs of crores. A few days ago, they held a photo-op programme. If you look at the history of these parties, you will realise that the people in the photo are involved in scams worth at least 20 lakh crore," the PM said.
Attacking the Congress, the PM said scams by that party alone run into lakhs of crores. Mentioning the 2G, coal and Commonwealth Games scams, PM Modi said there is no area - from helicopters to submarines - which has remained unaffected by scams involving the Congress.
The Prime Minister also slammed Lalu Prasad Yadav's Rashtriya Janata Dal. "The party's list of scams is so long that even the judiciary is tired of pronouncing punishments one after the other," the PM said. He went on to attack M K Stalin's Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, Mamata Banerjee's Trinamool Congress and Sharad Pawar's Nationalist Congress Party and said that the parties' "corruption meter never goes down".
32 leaders from 16 parties had attended the mega opposition meeting in Patna, which was hosted by Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar and his deputy Tejashwi Yadav, on June 23.