Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched a fresh broadside against the opposition on Thursday, February 9, saying their "keechad" (dirt) of allegations will “only help the lotus bloom”. He also asserted that “he alone outweighs all who had to take turns to shout slogans to oppose him.” PM Modi declared that he lives for the country and wants to do something for the country, which has rattled the opposition parties and they are playing political games just to save themselves. Replying to the Congress charge that the BJP was ignoring Jawaharlal Nehru's efforts in nation building after Independence, PM Modi retorted that if the first prime minister was so great, why have his scions never used his surname.
"The country is watching how one person has outweighed so many," he said as the opposition members kept shouting "Modi-Adani, bhai-bhai". PM Modi was speaking in reply to a debate on a motion thanking the President for her address to a joint sitting of Parliament, and listed various achievements of his government. "I live for the country and have embarked with the conviction to serve the nation," he claimed, adding that his political opponents are “playing games as they do not have the courage to take him on.” The opposition, he said, is resorting to this to save themselves.
As he rose to speak, opposition MPs, some holding placards, rushed into the Well shouting slogans against the Prime Minister and seeking a joint parliamentary committee probe into allegations levelled by the US short-seller Hindenburg Research against Gautam Adani. Hitting back, PM Modi said, "Jitna keechad uchaloge, kamal utna hee zyada khilega (the more dirt you fling, the bigger the lotus — the election symbol of BJP — will bloom)."
Opposition parties used the debate on the motion to attack the government for Adani group's phenomenal rise during the last few years. In his reply, Modi accused the Congress of adopting only "tokenism" in solving problems the country faced and said it was bothered only about its political ambitions and not the welfare of the nation.
He accused the Congress of trampling on the rights of states and regional parties by dismissing elected governments on 90 occasions by "misusing" Article 356 of the Constitution. "Who are the people that they served?" he asked, and responded that Indira Gandhi alone had used the article 50 times to dismiss governments. "This country is not anyone's fiefdom. Our policies reflect national and regional aspirations," he said. Attacking the Congress, he said the party named as many as 600 schemes after the Nehru-Gandhi family.
He then spoke about how elected governments of the Left in Kerala, NT Rama Rao in Andhra Pradesh, Sharad Pawar in Maharashtra and MG Ramachandran in Tamil Nadu were dismissed by the Congress. “These parties are now sitting with the Congress,” he said. "NT Rama Rao's government was dismissed when he was in the US for medical treatment," he said, adding M G Ramachandran must be “turning in his grave seeing his DMK align with the Congress.”
The Prime Minister also warned states against resorting to populist measures for political gains.