Prime Minister Narendra Modi lashed out at the opposition in his 1.5-hour response to the debate on the motion of thanks to the president’s address on Monday, in what appeared to be his rebuttal to critics who have repeatedly raised issues of economic distress and poor governance during the COVID 19 pandemic.
His speech, however, was full of pushing away the blame of what’s been going wrong to the Congress and prior administrations.
The Prime Minister was doing precisely what he accused Congress of doing by utilising the Parliament to advance his party’s interests rather than the country’s. He could have just listed BJP’s accomplishments without bringing up the Congress’ apparent shortcomings, but how does one win elections like that?
He blamed the Congress and the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) for spreading the coronavirus to UP, Punjab, and Uttarakhand by sending migrants home but what he failed to mention was that majority of Mumbai’s migrants went to UP and Bihar. However, since Bihar will not be voting anytime soon unlike the other states he brought up, it makes sense why it wasn’t mentioned.
The Maharashtra administration, according to Modi, views migrant labour as a burden. His own administration, on the other hand, showed so much disregard towards the migrants that this statement could apply even more aptly to the BJP.
The Railways forced poor migrants who were stuck far from home owing to Modi’s abrupt lockdown to have to pay for their return travel. Migrants from the BJP-ruled states of Gujarat and Karnataka are said to have paid the highest rates.
Thackeray urged the Railways not to charge fees; Sonia Gandhi requested her party units to pay the migrants’ fares; but it was only after Supreme Court rulings happened that the Centre allowed migrants to travel for free, a month after the trains began.
As his speech failed to actually respond to any of the opposition’s accusations, it appears that the BJP’s last-ditch effort throughout election season was to rely on Modi’s ability to artfully dodge actual concerns by indulging in the blame game.
