RAJKOT (TIP): Reacting to Congress leader Rahul Gandhi invoking Mahatma Gandhi in his election speeches, chief minister Narendra Modi scoffed at the Gandhi scion for narrating the historical anecdote of how Motilal Nehru found Gandhiji sleeping on the floor instead of a bed in their ancestral home in Allahabad. The AICC general secretary, who spoke at length on the relationship between the Nehru family and Gandhiji, had said in Jamnagar, that the Mahatma was unsettled by the fact that Nehru was sleeping on the floor in jail and that is why he had no right to sleep on the bed in Motilal Nehru’s house.

“It was Gandhiji’s greatness to show concern for Nehru. He was always compassionate towards his co-workers. But I want to ask (Rahul Gandhi) what does it show when Motilal himself slept in the comfort of a bed when his own son was sleeping on the floor in jail. You are descendents of Motilal” Modi questioned, addressing rallies in Dholka and Surendranagar. Modi also ridiculed Rahul for talking about the telecom revolution engineered by late Rajiv Gandhi.

“What is the use of a mobile when you can’t provide electricity to charge it?” he said, slamming the Central Government for the sorry state of electricity in India. The chief minister also said that instead of asking votes by referring to the telecom revolution, the Congress should work towards meeting people’s basic needs. “Do you want a mobile phone or do you want food? Do you want a mobile phone or relief from inflation?” he remarked.

Countering Rahul’s charges on 14,000 pending RTI applications, Modi advised him to check Delhi government’s pending list of applications. “There are three lakh pending RTI applications in Delhi,” he claimed. Reacting to Rahul’s allegations that the state Assembly did business only for 25 days in a year, Modi said, “From May 2011 to May 2012, Rahul Gandhi’s attendance in the Lok Sabha was 24 out of 85 sittings. From 2010 to 2011, it was 19 out of 72 sittings!” “If he had respect for the Parliament, he would go for all sittings!” he said.