Kamal Ghorui
NEW DELHI: Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Monday launched a scathing attack on Prime Minister Narendra Modi after he urged citizens to postpone gold purchases, reduce fuel consumption and avoid foreign travel, calling the appeal evidence of “failure”.“Yesterday, Modi ji asked the public to make sacrifices—don’t buy gold, don’t go abroad, use less petrol, cut down on fertiliser and cooking oil, take the metro, work from home. These aren’t sermons—they’re proof of failure,” Rahul Gandhi said in a post on X.The leader of olpposition in the Lok Sabha said the appeal exposed the limits of PM Modi’s decade-long tenure. “In 12 years, he’s brought the country to such a pass that the public now has to be told—what to buy, what not to buy, where to go, where not to go. Every time, they shift the responsibility onto the people just so they can wriggle out of accountability themselves. Running the country is no longer within the remit of a Compromised PM,” he added.The remarks came after PM Modi, addressing a BJP rally in Hyderabad on Sunday, called for a series of economic sacrifices from the public, citing the ongoing conflict in West Asia and its pressure on India’s foreign exchange reserves.The Prime Minister urged citizens to reduce petrol and diesel consumption, use metro services, carpool, shift to electric vehicles and work from home where possible. He also asked people to postpone gold purchases and foreign travel for one year and reduce the use of edible oil and chemical fertilisers.“We have to save foreign exchange by any means,” PM Modi said at the rally, drawing a parallel with behavioural changes adopted during the Covid-19 pandemic. “We got into work-from-home, virtual meetings, video conferencing, and many other methods during Covid-19. We got habituated to them. The need of the hour is to resume those methods.”The PM framed the measures as a national duty during a global crisis, saying the West Asia conflict had driven up prices of petrol and fertilisers significantly, straining supply chains despite government interventions.
