Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi on Tuesday stepped up the attacks on Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his “suit-boot sarkar” over its anti-people policies and corporate affiliations.

Rahul was addressing a Youth Congress convention in Kozhikode.
Slamming the BJP-led NDA government’s undue “hurry” in re-promulgating the Land Acquisition Ordinance, Rahul reiterated that three critical features of the Land Bill as formulated by the Congress-led UPA – regarding pre-acquisition consent, social impact assessment and provision of returning the land to its original owner if projects fail to take off in five years – were being removed.

He dismissed the government’s claim that land acquisition bottlenecks were the biggest impediment to creation of jobs. “The Finance Ministry itself has responded to a RTI query that only eight per cent of projects were stalled because of land-related issues. The biggest lie that you are being told is that there are no jobs because there is no land,” he said.