Talk of empowering people hollow when PM left powerless: BJP

BJP today ridiculed Rahul Gandhi's comments that he believed in empowering people and fighting graft, saying his claims sound hollow as he and his mother Sonia Gandhi had even "snatched" away the powers of the Prime Minister while several scams took place during the UPA rule.
Accusing Gandhi of "misleading" the country by saying that the UPA government would increase manufacturing growth when it was set to demit office in a month, BJP leader Ravi Shankar Prasad said people are not as foolish as he "thinks" them to be.
Gandhi could not even cross the "nursery level" performance in his interview to a private channel where he made these comments, Prasad said as he used contents of a book written by PM's former media adviser Sanjaya Baru to take swipe at the Congress Vice-President.

"If you could snatch the rights of your own PM how can you assure the people that you will give rights to the common man? If you could not empower your PM, how could you empower people of India?," he said in a press briefing.
"The same Rahul Gandhi who along with his mother made the PM powerless says he will now give strength to the people of India," he said sarcastically, referring to the content of the book written by Singh's former media adviser Sanjaya Baru.
By not rebutting the book's claim that the ruling Congress pressurised PM Manmohan Singh into giving credit to Gandhi for NREGA, Prasad said the Congress leader has only confirmed it.

The BJP leader ridiculed Gandhi's assertion that he fought against graft by introducing institutional reforms like RTI, saying, "coalgate, 2G scam and railgate all happened during UPA rule despite RTI."
"Let me tell you Rahul Gandhi humbly that people of India are not fools as you think them to be," he said.