TEAM HERALD
PANJIM: The Congress on Monday said that the speedy saffronization of the country by the Narendra Modi-led government is a dangerous trend in a democratic and secular country like India.
“People never voted for the Modi-government because they believed or wanted to bring in ‘Hindutva,’ but people wanted change,” All India Congress Committee Media Cell in-charge Praniti Shinde told media persons in Panjim Monday afternoon. “Through its saffronization, the government is trying to break the secular thread,” she alleged.
Shinde pointed out how the BJP government is attempting to saffronise the political system in the country by inducting people with RSS and Sangh Parivar backgrounds into important branches of the administration.
The party expressed its anguish over what it called attempts to induct people belonging to the RSS and other Sangh Parivar outfits in the Indian Council of Historical Research, Indian Council of Social Science Research, Film Censor Board, Prasar Bharti, educational curriculum setting bodies like NCERT and SCERTs, National Book Trust, teachers’ training institutes and bodies that select vice-chancellors of Central and State universities.
Shinde, a Congress MLA in Maharashtra, said that the agenda of secularism would help Congress to sustain in the next four years. “We will reach out to the people on secularism,” she said.
Stating that the Modi-government’s honeymoon period has ended, Congress alleged that the election promises, of which not even 10 per cent have been fulfilled, were just ‘election gimmickry.’ “BJP lies were far better marketed, compared to Congress’ ground work during the election campaign, which got them to power,” she said.
Shinde also accused the Prime Minister of humiliating India during his recent visit to China. “Modi is the first Prime Minister of the country who went abroad and criticized India,” she added.
The Congress leader commented that Modi should remember that those people whom he calls to have been born in sinful India had elected him as a Prime Minister. “They are the same people who made a chai wala the Prime Minister,” she stated.
Congress said that the nation progresses because of the people and not because of one man as Modi thinks. The party further claimed that the UPA government’s social welfare schemes are packaged and presented by the new NDA government as theirs.
