Sharad Pawar lauds Gandhis, chides PM Modi

Nationalist Congress Party chief Sharad Pawar has heaped praises on the influential Gandhi-Nehru family, asserting that they contributed to the development and made sacrifices for the country, while taking a jibe at Prime Minister Narendra Modi over his constant attacks on the Gandhi family.

"Generations of Gandhi-Nehru family have contributed to the country's development and have made sacrifices. If today, Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi are working with the same sentiment of serving the poor then we should respect them. But Prime Minister (Narendra) Modi only says that one family ruined the country," Pawar said at a rally in Satara on Tuesday.

The NCP leader also said that the people of the country should "respect" the Gandhi-Nehru family as they continue to serve the poor. He trained his guns at the Prime Minister for repeatedly making accusations on the Gandhi family.

Pawar, who left the Congress to form his new party in 1999, accused the BJP government of fooling the citizens and not focusing on key issues like development and agrarian crisis and accusing them of promoting communal hatred.

Pawar's cryptic remarks come close on the heels of Lok Janshakti Party (LJP) leader Chirag Paswan's comments last week where he praised the Congress of raising "real" issues of the youth and farmers, which fetched his party a victory in the recently-held Assembly elections in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh.

While being critical of the BJP, Paswan said that the BJP lost the Assembly elections because it failed to address the issues of farmers and youth unemployment and emphasised on Ram temple only.

He underlined that there is an urgent need for the BJP to return to the issue of development like in 2014 by keeping away issues like the Ram temple.