PM's marketing, speeches are good but hollow: Rahul Gandhi

Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi on Saturday said Prime Minister Narendra Modi is good in marketing and delivering good speeches but his speeches are often hollow.

"He (Modi) went to Bihar and made promises and assurances but did not fulfill them. He came to Assam also and made good speeches and lofty promises but those proved hollow," said Gandhi while addressing a public rally at Borghat in Assam's Nagaon district.

Ahead of the rally, he also took part in a road show walking five km with thousands of people in the district.

He said the biggest achievement of the Congress government in Assam was its success in bringing back peace to the state in the last 15 years. "We are here to serve people. However, the present government at the Centre has been trying to help only few businessmen in the country.

"They (businessmen) get everything. Thousands of crores of rupees have come to country's exchequer after recent decline in the petrol prices. But the people of the country will not get even a single penny, all the money will go to his (Prime Minister's) industrialist fiends," said Gandhi.

The current government at the Centre, he said, was not the government of common people, the salaried class, the workers but of the industrialists.

"Wherever I go, I raise the issues of the poor and common people. But when we ask these questions, Modiji attacks us personally," he said, obliquely referring to his recent accusations aganst the Modi government and the prime minister's rebuttal in the Lok Sabha the following day.

"Modiji cannot answer my questions as he does not have the answers."

Rahul Gandhi also targetted the union finance minister over his budget, saying: "Arun Jaitleyji has brought a 'Fair and Lovely scheme' through which all the thieves in the country can convert their black money into white."

"However, the people who work for the whole life and take salary and pension are made to pay tax on their PF (provident fund)."

"I want to assure the salaried class that Congress party will fight for you. I will pressurise the government as this government is not your government, this is not the government of farmers and employees but of industrialists only," he said.

Referring to recent incident at the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), he said there were about 8,000 students of which 1,000 were from the northeast.

"The BJP put JNUSU president Kanhaiya Kumar behind bars by filing sedition case against him. I listened to his 20-minute speech and there was not a single word against the country."

"If some people have shouted anti-Indian slogan in JNU, you punish them, put them behind bars. But why are you trying to spoil the future of 8,000 students? Why are you trying to spoil the careers of 1,000 students from northeast in JNU? We are going to fight for them," said the Congress vice president.