Calling paper leaks an ‘anti-national’ act, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Thursday mounted a scathing attack on the Narendra Modi government over the alleged irregularities in National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test (NEET) and cancellation of National Eligibility Test (NET).
Mr. Gandhi said paper leaks are a result of the “capture of education institutions by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and its parent organisation” and “until it is not reversed, it will continue”.
Also Read | UGC-NET exam cancelled to safeguard students’ interest, says Education Ministry official
Addressing a press conference at the party headquarters, Mr. Gandhi said Prime Minister Modi has “psychologically collapsed” post the elections and is more bothered about the survival of his government than the future of lakhs of students. The former Congress chief said Mr. Modi is silent about paper leaks as his “main agenda is to have his own Lok Sabha Speaker”.
The Congress leader said the concept of Mr. Modi has been demolished in the elections. He said had it been a Prime Minister like Atal Bihari Vajpayee or Manmohan Singh, who believed in humility, the government would have been better equipped to resolve these issues. “He (Mr. Modi) will struggle to run a government like this as his idea of running the government is to generate fear among people. Now people are not scared of him as the basic concept of Modi has been destroyed in this election,” Mr. Gandhi said.
Mr. Gandhi, who met a delegation of NEET aspirants on Thursday, said the Opposition will raise the issue in the first session of the 18th Lok Sabha that will begin on June 24.
“It was being said Prime Minister Modi stopped the Ukraine-Russia war and Israel-Gaza war. But he is either not able to stop exam paper leaks or doesn’t want to,” Mr. Gandhi said a day after the UGC-NET was cancelled.
“There has been an expansion of the idea of Vyapam to rest of country,” he said, comparing the NEET controversy with the Vyapam examination and recruitment scam in Madhya Pradesh. He cautioned the government not to do anything in an arbitrary manner and said “rules that apply to one paper should apply to another”.
Mr. Gandhi said a slipper was thrown at the Prime Minister’s motorcade during his recent visit to Varanasi as “people no longer feared him”. However, in a subsequent post on X, he said, “Throwing slippers at Narendra Modi and his convoy is highly condemnable and a serious lapse in his security. Our protest against the policies of the government should be registered in a Gandhian way, there is no place for violence and hatred in democracy”.
Published - June 20, 2024 03:47 pm IST
