Sharad Pawar slams PM Modi over black money issue

Kolhapur, Apr 12: Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) chief Sharad Pawar on Thursday said Prime Minister Narendra Modi has failed to fulfill his 2014 pre-poll promise of recovering black money within 100 days of coming to power.

He also criticised the BJP-led NDA government over its failure to clean the river Ganga.

"The Prime Minister had promised that if he failed to recover black money in 100 days", he was ready for punishment of hanging in public.

"But the black money has not come out...so what happened to his promise?...though we are not interested in hanging anyone in public," he said.

Pawar was speaking at a rally organised in support of NCP candidate from the Kolhapur Lok Sabha constituency Dhananjay Mahadik.

The Maratha strongman also recalled a statement given by Union minister Uma Bharti in December 2017 over cleaning of the Ganga.

Bharti had said she would launch 'mahaupvaas se mahaprayan' (fast unto death) if implementation of plans related to Ganga cleaning did not start by October 2018. Pawar said the sacred river still remained polluted, but Bharti has not yet launched her fast unto death.

The Devendra Fadnavis government in Maharashtra is not serious about providing reservation to the Maratha community, he alleged. The BJP-led government first decided to provide reservation to the Marathas and then asked someone close to it to file a petition in the Bombay High Court against the measure, he claimed.

"The BJP-led government is fooling people. This government has no right to stay in power as it is insensitive towards farmers and the poor," he said.

PTI