Congress has outlived its purpose, says Goyal

Invoking Mahatma Gandhi's statement that the Congress should be disbanded after Independence, Union minister and BJP leader Piyush Goyal on Thursday said the country's oldest political party has outlived its purpose.

Speaking to reporters at the Maharashtra BJP headquarters here, Goyal claimed Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his government have fulfilled every dream of the Father of the Nation.

"Bapu had rightly said in 1947 that the Congress party should be wound up. It has outlived its purpose. I think what we are hearing from the Congress today reconfirms that Mahatma Gandhi was right in 1947," he said in response to a query on Congress spokesman Manish Tewari's statements made on Wednesday.

Speaking in Nagpur, Tewari had taken potshots at the BJP over its demand to confer the Bharat Ratna on Hindutva icon V D Savarkar and sought to know why the saffron outfit is not seeking the country's highest civilian award for Mahatma Gandhi's assassin Nathuram Godse.

In its manifesto for the October 21 state polls released on Tuesday, the BJP promised to push for conferring the Bharat Ratna on Savarkar along with legendary social reformers Mahatma Jyotiba Phule and his wife Savitribai Phule.

"Everybody in the country has accepted that there is one leader in the country who has fulfilled Mahatma Gandhi's agenda. That person is Narendra Modi and the party is BJP," the Union Minister for Railways and Commerce & Industry said.

"The Modi-led NDA government has fulfilled every dream of Mahatma Gandhi. We have worked for the poorest of the poor," he added.

According to him, every action of the Modi government has been taken keeping the poorest of the poor in mind.

"This is one government which has relentlessly pursued for five years the path of welfare of the poorest of the poor," he said.

On Rajasthan Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot's allegation that the current GST structure has affected Maharashtra's revenue, Goyal said, "The BJP-led states are not reporting any loss in revenue, then why is he cribbing?

"He is responsible for the loss of revenue in Rajasthan and should introspect whether his own intervention is resulting in the drop of revenue collection."

The Union minister said Gehlot should concentrate on problems of the Congress-ruled Rajasthan instead of talking about issues related to other states.

"If he (Gehlot) has problems, let us hold the state elections again and see what happens. Under his chief ministership, the BJP won almost all the Lok Sabha seats in Rajasthan (in May 2019).

"He should not be visiting other states and do the talking when his own state is facing problems," Goyal said, taking a jibe at the Congress chief minister.