lok-sabha-elections

Updated: Feb 14, 2019 15:10 IST

Of the many swipes that Prime Minister Narendra Modi took at Congress president Rahul Gandhi in his last Lok Sabha speech, one was over his famous hug in Parliament that stole the limelight. At a meeting in Rajasthan’s Ajmer, the 48-year-old Congress president delivered his comeback. The hug was designed, Gandhi told a gathering of Seva Dal volunteers to counter hate.

“Modiji had hatred for me. I went and hugged him and finished the hatred for me,” the Congress president said.

Rahul Gandhi asked Congress workers to fight the “hatred” of the BJP and the RSS with love. He said that the Congress wants to defeat the BJP in 2019 general elections but not finish them off.

“If the BJP and the RSS abuse us, we must fight them with love. Modiji often attacks me and my family and says he will finish the Congress. I, on the other hand, went and hugged him in Parliament,” Gandhi said.

Also read: Opposition meet brings Rahul Gandhi, Arvind Kejriwal, to same room. It’s a first

During a debate on the no-confidence brought by the Telugu Desam Party (TDP) in the Lok Sabha last year, Rahul Gandhi stunned Modi and the treasury benches when he finished his speech and walked over to the PM and hugged him. The Congress president then went back to his seat and appeared to wink. This provided ammunition to the BJP which said such acts are not for Parliament.

In his last speech in Lok Sabha on Wednesday before the 2019 elections, PM Modi didn’t miss a chance to take a jab at Congress boss. The PM said he learnt a lot of things after being elected for the first time to the Lok Sabha in 2014. “I got to know the difference between gale milna and gale parna (hugging and piling on). I got to know about aankhon ki gustakhiyaan (mischief of the eye),” he said.

On Thursday, the Congress president said that the 2019 polls will be a fight between ideologies. “It will be a battle between the RSS and the BJP’s ideology to divide the country and the Congress’s efforts to unite it. For the BJP, India is a product, for us it is a sea of people,” Rahul Gandhi said.

He also targeted the NDA government over the agrarian crisis in the country. The Congress president alleged that PM Modi made an empty promise of loan waiver to farmers, but wrote off bank dues of his industrialists.

Also read: In report card to Lok Sabha, PM Modi’s sharp dig at Rahul Gandhi