'Agnipariksha For Congress Leader': Anurag Thakur Takes Jibe At Rahul Gandhi In Lok Sabha

New Delhi: BJP leader Anurag Thakur on Monday listed out various economic achievements of the NDA government in the last 10 years and took a swipe at Rahul Gandhi, saying he was enjoying power without responsibility till he became the Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha.

Initiating the discussion on the Motion of Thanks on President's Address, Thakur said the Lok Sabha elections have kept those against the Constitution in the Opposition benches for the third time.

While congratulating Gandhi on becoming the Leader of Opposition, Thakur said the Congress leader now has power with responsibility and "absentee landlordism will not work".

For the last many years, Gandhi was enjoying power without responsibility, Thakur said and asserted that it was an "agnipariksha" for the Congress leader now.

"The person who was used to bunking, would he be able to sit in the House till late as the prime minister does?... he is not there (even) now," the BJP leader remarked.

Gandhi was not in the House when Thakur made the remarks and there were protests from the Opposition members.

Taking a jibe at the Congress, he said they have been adamant on proving that "99 is more than 240", Thakur said referring to the tally of the Congress and BJP in the recent Lok Sabha elections.

"When a party sets such low standards, it finds even poor performance overwhelming," he said.

"When the UPA won in 2004, the Congress had 145 seats and BJP had 138. There was a difference of only seven seats. You formed the government, and ran it for five years, did we say anything? In 2009 you had 206 seats... But BJP got 282 seats in 2014... " he said.

"They could not face Modi, so they formed an alliance with those in jail, and those on bail," he said in an apparent reference to the INDIA bloc.

Taking a jibe at the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, he said, "There is a leader who used to claim he was the most honest person. We had heard of work from home, they showed us work from jail. He came out for campaigning and went back to Tihar." He also attacked the INDIA bloc, saying the parties that protested against the Emergency and whose governments in states were toppled by the previous Congress governments at the Centre, have joined their alliance.

"Lalu Yadav had gone to jail during the Emergency... Misa Bharti is named after the MISA act," he said, referring to The Maintenance of Internal Security Act (MISA), a controversial law passed in 1971 and used during the Emergency from 1975 to 1977 to arrest political dissenters.

Thakur also said India was once a fragile economy but in the last 10 years, the country has become the world's fifth-largest and also the fastest-growing economy in the world.

There was economic failure, crony capitalism and scams during the Congress rule while there have been no charges of corruption against Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led government in the last 10 years, Thakur said. 

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