Abki baar, 400 paar: PM Modi declares election season
It wasn’t an election rally but if you had simply listened to the speech without watching it, you probably would not have been able to tell that it was a speech made in Parliament. Prime Minister Narendra Modi was speaking on the Motion of Thanks on President Murmu’s speech on February 5, 2024 in the Lok Sabha.
We have shortlisted five key takeaways from what was a combative, no holds barred, almost 100-minute speech.
Abki baar…400 paar
In a speech where he singled out the Congress party, PM Modi said the Opposition had lost the will to even fight the elections.
“The third term of the BJP government is not far and people will give 370 seats to BJP and 400+ to NDA in the Lok Sabha elections,” he thundered in the Lok Sabha.
“I appreciate the Opposition’s resolve to remain in the opposition for a long time. The way you sat here (on treasury benches) for many decades, the same way you seem to have resolved to sit there (in the opposition). People will certainly give you their blessings,” the PM said mockingly.
Dynastic politics
The PM accused the Congress party of trying to launch and re-launch the same product, with the same result. Though he didn’t name the Gandhi scion, the reference was crystal clear. While Congress’s Rahul Gandhi has used ‘mohabbat ki dukaan’ to combat what he says is BJP’s nafrat ki rajniti or politics of hate, the PM in his speech said, “Congress ki dukaan… taala lagne ki naubat aayi hai…” (The Congress party will soon have to shut shop)
He also attacked the Congress for promoting dynastic politics, making a distinction between his own party’s dynasts and those from the Opposition.
“Rajnath Singh, Amit Shah don’t have their own parties,” saying that unlike the BJP, only one family runs the Congress party. The PM said there was a distinct difference between dynasts who only one family controlled the party while he had no problems with family members of political leaders who rose through the ranks.
Congress’s cancel culture
Whether it was Atmanirbhar Bharat or ‘Make in India’, the PM claimed that all the Congress was interested in was a ‘cancel culture’. “These are the nation’s achievements, not Modi’s,” he said, “How long will you nurse such hatred (for me) that you will cancel the country’s success?”
Modi’s guarantee
“India will be the third largest economy in my third term,” said the PM, recapping his government’s over his last two terms and saying that it would be the foundation on which a developed India would be built in his third term.
He recalled the UPA government’s interim budget speech speech of 2014, saying that at a time when India’s economy was ranked 11th, the UPA was content with the projection of the country climbing to the third rank in three decades, or till 2044.” He claimed his government’s welfare measures and push for development had got India to the 5th spot and would push it to the third place in his third term – again using ‘Modi’s guarantee’ as the catchphrase to drive home the point.
Nehru, Indira Gandhi and the comment on ‘lazy Indians’
PM Modi made a reference to India’s first PM Pandit Nehru’s independence day speech from 1959. “Indians generally do not have the habit of working very hard, we do not work as much as the people of Europe or Japan or China or Russia or America,” he quoted from Nehru’s speech. As Congress MPs sloganeered in protest, he claimed that PM Nehru thought Indians were ‘lazy and less intelligent’. He also quoted Indira Gandhi who had made a reference in 1974 to Indians ‘being complacent and having a defeatist attitude’.