lok-sabha-elections

Updated: Mar 23, 2019 11:07 IST

Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday invoked freedom fighter and socialist thinker Dr Ram Manohar Lohia to target the opposition including the Congress, which is trying to present a united front against the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party-led coalition in the Lok Sabha elections.

PM Modi said, “Dr Lohia would be horrified at the political developments taking place…Those parties that falsely claim to be Dr Lohia’s followers are desperate to form an opportunistic Maha Milawat or adulteration alliances with the same Congress. It is both ironical and reprehensible.”

“Whenever Dr Lohia spoke, inside or outside Parliament, the Congress trembled with fear,” PM Modi wrote in his latest blog paying tribute to the socialist leader on his birth anniversary.

Calling the main opposition party “disastrous”, he quoted Lohia as saying, “During the Congress regime neither agriculture and industry nor the army has improved.”

The prime minister said the BJP-led government rolled out various welfare schemes for the farmers as “Dr Lohia’s thoughts inspire us”. He named schemes such as PM Kisan Samman Nidhi, Krishi Sinchai Yojana, e-Nam and Soil Health Cards in his blog saying, “He would surely have been very proud of the NDA Government’s work.”

“These words can accurately describe even subsequent Congress regimes, where farmers were harassed, industry was discouraged (except if they belonged to friends and relatives of Congress leaders) and national security was ignored,” PM Modi said.

At another place in his blog, he invoked Lohia to state that “dynastic politics was inimical to democracy” in a dig at many opposition parties, PM Modi has been targeting for family control over political organisation.

PM Modi has hit out at the Congress, the Samajwadi Party and the DMK in recent public rallies for promoting dynastic politics giving preference to family over merit.