Oppn leaders just banking on name of their grouping INDIA alliance: Rajnath

Defence Minister Rajnath Singh on Thursday took a dig at the INDIA alliance and said the opposition leaders are just banking on the name of their grouping as it was the only refuge left to them.

He also cited a Hindi proverb 'naam bade aur darshan chhote' (big name with little substance) to describe the opposition bloc.

The two-day meeting of the Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance (INDIA) began in Mumbai on Thursday. During the meeting, deliberations on the strategy and roadmap to take on the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections are expected to take place.

Singh also said that India has become powerful now and nobody considers it a weak nation anymore globally.

India's stature globally has increased substantially as compared to what it was in the past and the world listens attentively to what it speaks which was not the case earlier, he said.

Singh was speaking at an event held on the birth anniversary of Dr Vitthalrao Vikhe Patil, the pioneer of the cooperative movement, at Pravaranagar in Ahmednagar district of Maharashtra. He said the opposition has formed a new grouping called INDIA alliance.

"It is a 'gazab' (strange) name...INDIA. I think their meeting is going on today. But as everyone knows, it is nothing but 'naam bade aur darshan chhote'. For these people, name is the only refuge left. They want to wade through a river using this name," he said. "But by just using this name, the river cannot be crossed...A vortex cannot be crossed by using the name alone, for that one needs 'karma'," Singh said.

He said the India of the past is not the same any more.

"Our India is not the same that it used to be in the past when leaders from the country would go to various global platforms and speak but the world never used to listen to them seriously. Other countries used to think 'it is India, a weak nation and why should we listen'," he said. But today, India's stature in the world has increased so much that when it speaks at the international platform, the world listens attentively, the Union minister added.

When the Russia-Ukraine war began, several Indian students were stranded in Ukraine, he said.

"The concerned parents of the students appealed to Modi ji for their evacuation. PM Modi dialled Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Russian President Vladimir Putin. And see the charisma, the war stopped for four-and-a-half hours, and our students were evacuated. As many as 23,000 students were brought back," he said. But the opposition does not like this, he said. "It is because of the kind of credibility and prowess that India has established in the world...When we speak, the entire world listens. Nobody considers India a weak nation anymore. I would like to say that India is no longer a weak nation, it has become a powerful nation.

"There is no situation now wherein someone can intimidate us. But we are a peace-loving country, which gives a message of 'Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam' (the world is one family)," Singh said.

On the occasion, he lauded the contribution of Vitthalrao Vikhe Patil and said that the cooperative movement was led by him in Maharashtra, as a result of which the cooperative sector not only thrived in Maharashtra but spread across India.