Mamata Banerjee a 'speed breaker' in Bengal's development: PM Modi
Narendra Modi
Prime Minister Narendra Modi said Wednesday that West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee had to go for the betterment of the state. He said she was a "speed breaker" in the state's development.
Modi was speaking at an election rally in Siliguri in West Bengal.
"'Didi' (Mamata Banerjee) is a speed breaker in the path of West Bengal's development," Modi said.
"I am waiting for this speed breaker to go so development can gather speed," he added.
Modi also took on the Congress and their election manifesto, as he had done earlier in the day duringan election rally in Pasighat in Arunachal Pradesh.
The Congress had released its manifesto at its party headquarters in Delhi on Tuesday. The pushback from the BJP was swift, with Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley saying some of the ideas in it were "positively dangerous".
Jaitley added that some of the ideas in the manifesto looked like they had been written by the Congress president's (Rahul Gandhi) "friends in the tukde-tukde gang".
Jaitley had been referring to what the Congress manifesto says about Kashmir — that there would be no change to the constitutional status of Jammu and Kashmir, that the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA) would be reviewed, and that fewer soldiers and more policemen instead would be deployed in Kashmir.
"They (the Congress) want our defence forces to be helpless...Their hands and feet tied," Modi said in Siliguri on Wednesday.
He also accused the Congress and its allies of sympathising with Pakistan.
The Congress manifesto also says the party, if it is voted to power in the upcoming general elections, will increase expenditure on education and health to 6% of GDP — India will this year spend 1.44% of its GDP on defence — and bring in a single, moderate GST rate.
Jaitley on Tuesday said a number of those ideas were "unimplementable".
Modi kept up his vitriol later in the day while addressing yet another rally in Kolkata. (He tends to do three a day. On his first day of campaigning after the general elections were announced, he addressed three rallies in three different states — Meerut in Uttar Pradesh, Rudrapur in Uttarakhand, and Jammu — in one single day.)
"Today some people in their hate for Modi have started speaking against India," Modi said in Kolkata.
"Who raised doubts on airstrike? Who demoralised armed forces? Who had asked for count of bodies of terrorists?"
(With inputs from PTI)