Prime Minister Narendra Modi today hit back over the opposition’s allegations about his proximity with corrupt industrialist Nirav Modi and Mehul Choksi, saying unlike others, he was not afraid of being seen with industrialists, who play a key role in the nation’s development. “My conscience is clear,” he said, citing as an example Mahatma Gandhi, who often stayed at the Birla House, the home of the industrialist who extended support to the Congress during the freedom movement.
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“I am not the kind who is scared of being seen with industrialists,” the Prime Minister said at the launch of 81 investment projects in Lucknow, attended by captains of the industry.
“There are those who don’t want to meet them in public, but only behind curtains… there is not one industrialist who has not done a ‘shashwat pranaam’ (deferential respects) at their homes… Doesn’t everyone know whose aircraft these people travel in?” he said in a scathing attack.
Asserting that industrialists “play an important part in developing the country”, PM Modi said, “Why should we shame them, call them thieves?”
The Congress has repeatedly attacked the Prime Minister over his alleged links to industrialists, accusing him of neglecting the farmers and the underprivileged.
“We are not the people who will be afraid of standing beside industrialists. You would be knowing some people (who are such) that you would not find a single photo of them with an industrialist/businessman. But there is not a single businessman in this country who would not have gone to these people’s places and bowed to them in reverence,” Modi told a government-industry interface here as he inaugurated several development projects for Uttar Pradesh.
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