JOIN USCongress president Rahul Gandhi on Saturday taunted the BJP by launching a fundraising campaign for upgrading a hospital in Rourkela in Odisha to fulfill a “broken promise” of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
The Congress latched on to a campaign by an Odia idol maker, who had embarked on foot from Rourkela to New Delhi — a 1,350 km journey — to remind Modi of his promise made on April 1, 2015, to upgrade the Ispat General Hospital to a multi-speciality facility.
“On April 1, 2015, the PM played an April Fools' Day joke on the people of Orissa, as seen in this video. The Congress party has begun a fund raise to shame the PM into keeping the promise he made,” Rahul said on Twitter and posted a video of Modi's speech in Rourkela.
A stung BJP hit back at Rahul and accused the Congress president of peddling “fake news”.
“Rahul Gandhi’s Fake News Factory manufactures a new lie. Rs 200 crore has been allotted for the Hospital & DPR has been submitted, but when has Rahul ever bothered about facts,” Petroleum Minister Dharmendra Pradhan tweeted.
“After all kinds of scams, interesting to see a new scam in the form of fund-raising,” Pradhan, who hails from Odisha, said.
Rahul had also provided a link on Twitter that took web surfers to a fund-raising page on the Congress party website.
“If a few thousand Citizens could contribute even 100 rupees each, we will be able to raise enough money to take care of the infrastructure needed for the Rourkela hospital. Let's collect this money and hand it over to the authorities to initiate the work,” a brief write up on the web page said.
It also has a list of 50 persons who had made donations for the hospital.