Prime Minister Narendra Modi today took his penchant for wordplay into parliament to accuse the Congress of doing nothing for the people over the decades it ruled the country. "When we talk of a new India, we talk of hope," he said in an address to the lower house amid both applause and catcalls. "There are two periods in time as far as India is concerned -- BC and AD. BC stands for 'Before Congress', when nothing happened, and AD for 'After Dynasty', when everything happened."
By 'dynasty', PM Modi was referring to the principal opposition party -- which he claims is ruled by the Gandhi family. The Prime Minister often mockingly calls Congress president Rahul Gandhi "Yuvraj" (prince) while terming himself as a man of humble origins. The Congress' recent decision to grant Priyanka Gandhi a major role in the upcoming polls also spurred criticism of "dynastic politics" from the ruling party.
In actual terms, BC and AD expands to mean Before Christ and Anno Domini (translated to "in the year of the Lord") -- two broad periods in which human history has been divided into.
PM Modi claimed that even Mahatma Gandhi wanted to disband the Congress after the country achieved independence. "Congress-Mukt Bharat (Congress-free India) is not my slogan. I am just fulfilling Gandhiji's wishes," he said. The Prime Minister was referring to a note written by the freedom fighter days before his death, wherein he stated that the Congress should be disbanded because it has "outlived its purpose".
PM Modi even quoted Baba Ambedkar as saying that "being a part of the Congress is no less than suicide", drawing loud applause from others on the treasury benches. He then went on to name several scams allegedly carried out under the United Progressive Alliance rule, as opposed to the "welfare schemes" introduced under his.
The Prime Minister has coined quite a few acronyms aimed at targeting his detractors in the opposition ranks over the years, including RSVP for Rahul, Sonia, Vadra, Priyanka; ABCD for Adarsh, Bofors, Coal and Damaad; and SCAM for Samajwadi Party, Congress, Akhilesh Yadav and Mayawati. This eventually forced Congress president Rahul Gandhi to come up with a few acronyms of his own, including GDP for Gross Divisive Politics and GST for Gabbar Singh Tax.
A united opposition hopes to defeat the BJP in the upcoming Lok Sabha elections.
(With inputs from PTI)
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