Yamunanagar, Haryana: Congress chief Rahul Gandhi today said his idea for a minimum income guarantee scheme for the poorest of poor came from Prime Minister Narendra Modi's "Rs 15 lakh promise" made ahead of the 2014 Lok Sabha polls.
Mr Gandhi said the Congress's poll promise for the NYAY or Nyuntam Aay Yojna under which Rs 72,000 will be deposited each year in the bank accounts of 20 per cent of the country's poorest is "historic" and claimed that the Prime Minister looks "shaken" ever since the announcement was made on Monday, news agency PTI reported.
"The 2019 polls are a fight between two ideologies. On one hand are the BJP, the RSS and Narendra Modi and on the other is the Congress," Mr Gandhi said.
He was on a day's visit to Haryana to be part of Congress state unit's ongoing six-day yatra, which began from Gurugram earlier this week.
Mr Gandhi said that unlike the BJP, his party keeps its promise, referring to the NYAY poll promise.
"He (PM Modi) promised putting Rs 15 lakh into every Indian's bank account. Did anyone get anything?" Mr Gandhi said. "...Modi spoke lies about putting Rs 15 lakh... However, I felt that the idea about putting money into bank accounts of the poor was a right one if implemented with sincerity," the Congress president said.
The BJP has called the scheme a bluff, referring to former Congress prime minister Indira Gandhi's "Garibi Hatao (remove poverty)" slogan and questioning why the party could not end poverty in 70 years.
Even Bahujan Samaj Party chief Mayawati did not stop at backing her main opponent BJP's trenchant view of NYAY. In a tweet earlier this week, the former Uttar Pradesh chief minister once again targeted both parties in the same breath, underscoring that she does not consider herself on the same team as the Congress.
"Ruling BJP calling Congress slogan of Garibi Hatao 2.0 as bluff is true. But is poll bluff and reneging of poll promises the sole domain of the BJP? In fact BJP and Congress party are both birds of the same feather in betraying the interests of the poor, labourers, farmers and others," Mayawati tweeted on Wednesday.
With inputs from PTI