Congress president Rahul Gandhi on Monday accused Prime Minister Narendra Modi of giving scripted interviews on public platforms. “The first Indian PM who takes “spontaneous” questions that the translator has pre-scripted answers to!” Gandhi tweeted while alluding to PM’s interview at Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University (NTU) on Friday last.

On Sunday, Congress leader Shashi Tharoor had also taken a swipe at the PM’s interview, saying, “Oh dear. When the translator says what the PM was supposed to say, but didn’t.”

During PM’s interview on Friday, after PM replied to a question on challenges addressed by Asia, Modi’s English translator read out a lengthy passage from a piece of paper. Her answer included facts and figures that the PM had not talked about in his response. This raised speculation that the questions to the PM and answers given by him were part of a pre-planned script.

The first Indian PM who takes “spontaneous” questions that the translator has pre-scripted answers to! Good that he doesn’t take real questions. Would have been a real embarrassment to us all if he did. pic.twitter.com/8Iyfgiaseh — Rahul Gandhi (@RahulGandhi) June 4, 2018

Gandhi commented that the Prime Minister would have been a “real embarrassment” if he had taken “real” questions. “Good that he doesn’t take real questions. Would have been a real embarrassment to us all if he did,” Gandhi tweeted.

Modi participated in a dialogue titled ‘Transforming Asia through Innovation’ at Singapore’s prestigious NTU. Talking about the biggest challenges before the world, in particular Asia, PM said, “The biggest challenge before us is that the 21st century belongs to Asia. But do we have this sentiment, I think that is the biggest challenge.”

Modi also cited a report by an American university on the economic development of 2,000 years. According to the report, he said India and China contributed to 50 per cent of the world GDP for 1,600 years.

“It is only the last 300 years where we find the dominance of the western world,” he said, adding, “If we can overcome our internal problems, this interconnected world that we have if we can transform that into opportunities in the service of humanities for peace and for harmony then we together can make a huge contribution.”

“In human history, India and China have dominated global trade for centuries. At the same time, there was no conflict. We must think of furthering connectivity without any conflict,” the PM said.