Arhar Modi: Rahul’s chant leaves LS in splits

 Participating in the discussion, Gandhi concluded his short and crisp speech referring to the spiraling price of lentils saying “slogan in villages today was Arhar Modi, Arhar Modi”.

The attempt to needle Prime Minister Narendra Modi on his poll slogan, “Har Har Modi, Ghar Ghar Modi” was not lost on the House as the Opposition benches went into splits. “The PM talks about everything but price rise. Modi government celebrated its second happy birthday a few days back. 

While addressing the people, he spoke about Make In India, Connect India, Digital India, but he does not talk about price rise. Not once did he talk about pulses, potatoes and tomatoes,” said Gandhi.

Taking a dig at the Prime Minister over alleged false promises, Rahul said, “I want to remind PM Modi about the promise he made to everyone, and now has forgotten. You can make false claims on startup India, make in India but not on rising prices.” Gandhi said that price rise is the most important issue before people and false promises cannot be made on it. The Congress leader asked the Prime Minister to give a date when the price of Dal would come down. 

“You can make empty promises to people. But today you must give a date to this house when the price of Dal will come down.” In a spirited defence of the government, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said, “There was policy paralysis during the UPA regime and we inherited double digit inflation from the previous government.” Stating that the present inflation was due to seasonal factors, Jaitley said the government had taken several steps to control prices.

“Inflation is under control, I expect it to reduce further with good monsoon,” Jaitley said. “High price of dal is a concern for entire nation, government has taken steps to address mismatch in production and demand,” he said. Explaining the rising price of pulses Jaitley said, “We buy dal from countries like Mozambique, Tanzania.

There is a scarcity of dal in the world. This time around we are expecting a good crop and hence the inflation curve is moving downwards. We have to remove the mismatch in demand and supply. If these steps were taken 10 years ago, we would not be in this situation.”