PM attacks HDK for 'only the poor join Army' comment

Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday launched a scathing attack on Karnataka Chief Minister H D Kumaraswamy for the latter’s comments that those who do not get two square meals a day join the army.

Addressing an election rally in Nandurbar district in Khandesh region of Maharashtra, Modi targeted the JD(S) leader and also lashed out at the Congress for supporting him.

“It is the nature of the Congress and its allies to make fun of others and insult others,” Modi said.

“One of their friends, whom Congress made Karnataka Chief Minister (Kumaraswamy) had said that those who do not get two square meals a day join the army to become jawans,” the PM pointed out.

“What kind of language a chief minister is using. Those who join Army are poor, dying of hunger and join Army as they do not have another source of income,” he said.

“Those who touch the feet of their mothers and go to join the armed forces are ready to sacrifice their lives. The Congress has made such a person a chief minister, and he has not apologised,” Modi said.

A few days ago, in an interview, Kumaraswamy had targeted Modi by saying that his father H D Deve Gowda’s 10-month-long tenure as prime minister was much better than that of Modi.

In the rally, the prime minister said that the BJP-led NDA government had taken several steps to counter terrorism rather than the timid approach of the Congress-led UPA government. “Terrorism has been curbed in India and confined only to parts Jammu and Kashmir,” he said.

Modi said, “What was the condition of India before 2014? Bomb blasts would happen across the country, Mumbai, Pune, Hyderabad, Kashi, Ayodhya, Jammu. What did the Congress-NCP government do? They went across the world saying Pakistan did this. What did this chowkidar do?” he said in an apparent reference to the surgical strike along the LoC after the Uri attack and Balakot air strike after the Pulwama attack.