Team News Riveting
New Delhi, August 29
Ghulam Nabi Azad, who severed his long association with Congress on Friday, said he had assumed Prime Minister Narendra Modi to be a “crude man” but he had displayed humanity.
The former Union Minister on Monday recalled a terror-related incident during the farewell speech for Azad in Rajya Sabha. After Azad resigned from Congress, the party had alleged that he was “Modi-fied”. The leaders attacked him citing Modi’s speech in Rajya Sabha in February last year in which the teary-eyed prime minister had praised Azad as a “true friend”.
Modi had recalled the 2007 terror attack in Jammu and Kashmir on a bus carrying people from his state Gujarat when he was the chief minister and his interaction with Azad, who was then the chief minister of J-K.
Speaking to reporters, Azad said Modi’s emotional speech at his retirement was given a different twist by some “illiterate” Congressmen and their emotions expressed in the House were about the tragedy and not for each other.
“I assumed that Modi sahab was a crude man as he did not have children or his own family… and would not care but at least he has shown humanity,” he said and narrated the heartrending aftermath of the grenade explosion inside the Gujarat tourist bus.
Taking a swipe at Rahul Gandhi, he said it was Rahul who hugged Modi in Parliament not him.
Asked about Congress’ criticism, Azad said Modi is merely an excuse and they were riled ever since he and 22 other Congressmen wrote to Sonia Gandhi in August 2020, challenging their way of functioning.
Launching a fresh salvo on the Congress, Azad said the party needed medicine for treating it which is being provided by compounders instead of by doctors. Azad accused the leadership of not having time for setting the organisation right.
