PANAJI
Congress leader Shashi Tharoor on Friday slammed the Bharatiya Janata Party and its government for its one-nation-one-election proposal and the philosophy of a 'Hindu Rashtra'.
Tharoor, one of Congress's 'star campaigners' arrived in Goa on Thursday and addressed a press conference on Friday along with AICC Goa desk in-charge Manikrao Thakare, Congress State president Amit Patkar and other leaders.
"That is not the idea of India. That is not the India written in the constitution by Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar,” Tharoor said.
He urged Goans to support the INDIA bloc candidates to protect the country's diversity and save Democracy in the face of the BJP government's "washing machine politics" practised by weaponizing Central agencies.
The former deputy secretary general of the United Nations said, India has gone through major challenges and a lot of progress has been made in some areas while enduring several setbacks as well.
"The major danger we see today is to our democracy. In the last few years under the BJP's rule, the party is trying to dominate everything,” Tharoor said, adding that there has been weaponization of investigating agencies and Opposition leaders are being selectively targeted.
“The BJP washing machine cleans the charges of whoever joins them. The charges against them suddenly disappear,” Tharoor alleged.
Referring to the arrest of Aam Aadmi Party leader and Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, Tharoor said that it has only betrayed the BJP's weakness and desperation.
“Why did they do it in the middle of the election?” he questioned even as he called anti-democratic the Central government's action of freezing the Congress party's bank accounts.
“Is it democratic to freeze accounts of opposition parties? The BJP has done it to us. Is it democratic to lock up the opposition party leader, who is the chief minister of a State? They did it to Arvind Kejriwal. Is it democratic to selectively raid opponents' helicopters? Why don’t they raid helicopters, planes or cars of BJP leaders?" Tharoor said.
The diplomat-turned politician said this not the way democracy is meant to function even as he opined that the biased functioning of the BJP-led government is visible to the public.
On the governance front, Tharoor said, the Modi government's performance has only shown that its promises of two crore jobs, doubling of farmers incomes and crediting Rs 15 lakhs in people's accounts were just 'jumlas'.
Tharoor said the 'dual citizenship' issue will be taken up even as he said that there is a need to find a legally tenable formula for it.
