A day after the Opposition attacked Prime Minister Narendra Modi's speech during the no-confidence motion debate in Parliament, for barely touching upon Manipur, Rahul Gandhi held a press conference here Friday stepping up the attack on the PM. Castigating Modi over his speech, Rahul said that in his speech lasting more than two hours, the PM spoke on Manipur for “just two minutes”. “I watched the Prime Minister yesterday speaking for two hours, laughing, joking, 'lagaoing naaras (raising slogans)'. The Prime Minister seems to have forgotten that the state of Manipur is on fire and has been on fire for many days,” the Congress leader said at a press conference at the party headquarters, asking if this laughing and joking behoved the PM. “Women and children are dying, women are being molested and raped and the Prime Minister of India is sitting in the middle of Parliament and laughing. This is not about Rahul Gandhi, it is not about the Congress, it is not about the Opposition. It is about India, it is about our country. A state has been decimated, it does not exist anymore and it has happened because of the politics of the BJP — divide and rule and burn,” Rahul said. Accusing Modi of "ridiculing" the state and its women in his address in the Lok Sabha, Rahul said that when a person becomes the PM, he ceases to be a politician and should become the representative of the voice of the people. "Politics should be put aside and the PM should not speak as a petty politician, as the leader of a political party, but he should speak with the weight of the Indian people behind him. It is tragic to watch Narendra Modi, it is sad because the Prime Minister does not understand what he actually is," he said. "He is our representative, he is my representative and watching the PM spend two hours talking about the Congress, talking about the Opposition, making ridiculous remarks about the name (of the Opposition alliance), this really does not do justice to an Indian PM," Rahul said, referring to Modi's jibe that 'I.N.D.I.A' was just meant to split NDA with several 'I's in name. Modi “wants Manipur to burn and not douse the fire”, he added, repeating his claim during the no-confidence motion that the Army could have brought peace to the state but was not being given full charge. "The Prime Minister refuses to stop the fire, he wants Manipur to burn, he allows Manipur to burn because if he did want it to stop, there are tools in the hands of the government that can stop it immediately.” Rahul added: “I have full faith in the Indian Army, every Indian knows that if the Indian Army is told to put an end to this (violence), it will stop immediately.” Rahul questioned the expunging of his remarks within Parliament that the government had harmed “Bharat Mata in Manipur”, saying these were not “hollow words”. “The BJP has murdered Hindustan in Manipur,” he said, adding that it was for the first time in his 19 years in politics that he been told in a state that if he takes a person from one community in his security detail to the area of another community, the security personnel would be harmed. "When we went to Manipur and went to the Meitei area, we were told that they want us to come, they love us, but we should not have any Kuki in our security detail or they will be shot. We were told the same thing when we were going to the Kuki area, about the Meiteis," Rahul said. He said the central security personnel too told him that they had never seen anything like what was happening in Manipur. "That is why I said the idea of India has been (harmed) by the BJP in Manipur. I was not speaking metaphorically, I was speaking literally," the former Congress chief said. Manipur no longer exists as a state because a state requires control and authority, which have disappeared, Rahul said. "I have seen PMs from the Congress, the BJP. I have seen Mr (Atal Bihari) Vajpayee, and I have seen Mr Deve Gowda. There is a complete misunderstanding in the mind of Narendra Modiji about what the PM of India is," he said. with PTI inputs
