Opposition leaders slammed Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s address to the nation on Saturday (April 18), calling it politically motivated, lacking substance, and in breach of democratic norms, as it came amid elections in several states.
They argued that the address should be treated as a campaign speech and its cost added to the BJP’s election expenditure, alleging misuse of official platforms while the Model Code of Conduct is in force in multiple states.
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Terming PM Modi’s address as “partisan”, the Congress challenged him to bring a bill in Parliament to implement women’s reservation within the existing set-up of the Lok Sabha, soon after Modi’s address to the nation, in which he attacked the opposition parties for not backing the government’s Constitution amendment bill.
Kharge slams PM Modi
In a post on X, Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge said a “desperate and frustrated” prime minister with nothing meaningful to show for the last 12 years, turned an official address to the nation, into a political speech, full of “mudslinging, and outright lies”.
“The Model Code of Conduct is already in place, and it was very clear how the prime minister misused official machinery to attack his opponents. This is a travesty of democracy and the Constitution,” Kharge said.
“Modiji mentioned Congress 59 times, and women barely a few times. That tells the country everything about his priorities. Women are not the BJP’s priority. Congress is, because Congress stands on the right side of history,” the Congress chief said.
The Congress president accused the BJP of being anti-women in both action and attitude. “They have no answers for Hathras. They have no answers for Unnao. They have no answers for the treatment of Haryana’s women wrestlers. They have shielded rapists within their own party. They released the rapists in the Bilkis Bano case. They have garlanded criminals and rapists,” Kharge alleged and added that the NCRB data itself shows that crimes against women are highest in BJP-ruled states.
DMK, TMC hit back at BJP
DMK spokesperson TKS Elangovan also criticised Prime Minister Modi’s address to the nation, accusing the BJP of “cheating the people.”
“They (BJP) are blatantly cheating the people. This Bill (women’s reservation) was introduced twice and they did not support it, which is why it had been pending in Parliament for quite some time. It was because of the BJP. They are not interested in women’s empowerment, but in reducing the number of seats of the southern states. Out of the 850 seats, they mentioned that Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana and Puducherry will get 170 seats, which means the remaining northern states will get 680 seats. This is how they planned it. We have only opposed delimitation and never said a single word against women’s reservation,” the DMK spokesperson said.
Also read | DMK rejects BJP charge on women’s quota, calls delimitation link a ‘political ploy’
“Why should they bring it now when the states are going to polls? They want to mislead the public. That is why they convened this session, thinking MPs from poll-bound states will not be able to take part in it,” Elangovan further said.
TMC leader Saket Gokhale challenged Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar to “add the cost of Modi’s TV speech tonight to BJP’s election expense account” if he has the “guts.”
“On a side note, a leader who is confident does not act so desperate. Modi’s feeble attempt tonight in the middle of two state elections shows that he’s shaken,” he said. The former Rajya Sabha MP called it a sign of the “impending downfall” of the prime minister and Union Home Minister Amit Shah. “They’re both losing their grip and it’s showing clearly. Countdown begins starting with Bengal,” he added.
Opposition flags norm breach
In a post on X, CPI(M) Rajya Sabha leader John Brittas said, “No PM has ever used a national address to openly criticise and target the opposition in this manner.” He accused the prime minister of breaking a “long-standing democratic norm” with his address to the nation to criticise the Opposition.
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“By directly attacking opposition over the Women’s Reservation Bill and likening their actions to ‘foeticide’ and being ‘anti-women’, this speech has made it evident that the BJP is willing to go to any extent to undermine healthy parliamentary conventions and constitutional traditions,” he said on X. “It’s evident that govt has lost its balance after the drubbing it got in the Lok Sabha yesterday,” Brittas added.
CPI(M) general secretary MA Baby derided Modi’s address as a “sorry face-saving attempt filled with mere rhetoric.” He said it came “in the face of the utter humiliation suffered in the Lok Sabha” when the Constitution amendment bill was defeated by the opposition unity.
Baby accused the prime minister of using “theatrics to hide the fact that he and his party were merely using women as pawns to execute a devious political strategy will not work.” “He stands truly exposed,” he said.
CPI Rajya Sabha MP P Sandosh Kumar called the address “hollow” and “devoid of any meaningful content.” “The Prime Minister has offered no explanation, no accountability, only repetition of a manufactured narrative meant to hide the government’s own failure. This was not an address to the nation, but an attempt to deflect responsibility through rhetoric,” he wrote.
(With agency inputs)
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