The Congress continued its attack on Prime Minister Narendra Modi , with its president Rahul Gandhi on Friday calling him “Prime Time Minister” for carrying on with a pre-scheduled photo shoot and filing of a documentary on February 14, the day 40 CRPF jawans were killed in a car bombing in Kashmir’s Pulwama.
Tagging photographs from the Corbett National Park where Mr. Modi was filming a documentary for the Discovery channel, Mr. Gandhi said, “Three hours after 40 jawans were martryed at Pulwama, ‘Prime Time Minister’ continued with his film shoot.”
“Even as pain ran through the country’s heart and the families of the martyrs, he was smiling and on a photo shoot by the lake,” he tweeted with hashtag PhotoShootSarkar.
At a press conference in the party headquarters, former Union Minister Manish Tewari played a clip from Doordarshan from February 14, which showed Mr. Modi addressing a public rally via his mobile phone at 5:10 p.m.
Referred to the clip, he said Mr. Modi must answer to the question of what he was doing between 3.10 p.m. and 5.10 p.m. the day the attack occurred. “Because the Doordarshan clip shows that he was addressing a rally through his phone,” he said.
“There are only two possibilities: One, even after learning, he chooses to be Commander Corbett and life continues as normal. The second possibility is even more dangerous,” he said. “For two hours, the Prime Minister remains unaware and that is frightful.”
“We are a nuclear State. Every time, you use hyper jingoism to hide your national security failure. Mr. Prime Minister, we won’t allow you and your government to get away after failing our security,” he said.
Responding to Law Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad’s remarks that the content of what Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan and the Congress said bore a striking resemblance, Mr. Tewari said the BJP did not have the copyright for nationalism. “Asking tough questions and standing with the forces are not mutually exclusive,” he said.
On playing cricket with Pakistan
On whether India should play cricket with Pakistan, he said if Pakistan was serious on cracking down on terrorism, they needed to first arrest Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) chief Masood Azhar. “Everyone knows that Jaish made people vote for the Tehreek-e-insaaf.”
Mr. Tewari also brought up an announcement made by Transport and Waterways Minister Nitin Gadkari and said, “Anybody who reads the Indus Water Treaty knows that we can use the eastern rivers and Pakistan can use the Western river waters.”
On Thursday, Mr. Gadkari announced that India would not allow its share of water from the Indus network of rivers to flow into Pakistan.
Mr. Tewari said, “We need to build dams and that doesn’t come up in days. The projects that the Minister was referring to were approved in the cabinet in 1999 and 2006.”
Published - February 22, 2019 01:02 pm IST
