Addressing a rally in poll-bound Himachal Pradesh, Punjab Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann joined the freebies debate and hit out at Prime Minister Narendra Modi over a pre-poll promise made ahead of the 2014 Lok Sabha Election.
Speaking in Una, Mann said the Prime Minister has attacked the Aam Aadmi Party governments in Delhi and Punjab over the issue of freebies while he has refused to speak on the Rs 15 lakh that he had promised to the people of the country in the run-up to the 2014 General Election, after which he became the PM.
“PM Modi has targeted us by saying that we are distributing muft ki revdiyan but I want to ask the PM where is that ‘papad’ of ‘Rs 15 lakh in every account’ that he sold,” CM Mann told the rally.
The BJP and the AAP have been engaged in a war of words and the freebies debate has even reached the Supreme Court. The debate had started after PM Modi had accused several opposition governments of distributing free revdis in order to win votes. He had cautioned the people against the revdi culture saying it was not good for the country as well as the economy.
The AAP governments in Delhi and Mumbai have implemented several schemes such as providing free access to utilities like electricity and water up to a certain limit. The AAP has questioned BJP on how ensuring free access to good healthcare and education becomes a freebie that is aimed at winning elections.
It may be recalled here that in the run-up to the 2014 national election when Narendra Modi was still not the PM, he had promised the electorate to bring back black money stashed abroad. As the BJP PM candidate, Modi had said each Indian would receive Rs 15 lakh when black money would be repatriated from abroad.
However, the party had later clarified that the Rs 15 lakh promise was actually an idiom.
“Modi ji’s statement was an idiomatic expression that was given during the Lok Sabha polls. Everybody knows that this black money doesn’t go to accounts of people,” Union Minister Amit Shah had stated later, in 2015.
