New Delhi :All through the tenure of Manmohan Singh as the Prime Minister, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the then Gujarat CM Narendra Modi kept asking him to speak more often on social issues. The advice seems to have travelled a full circle now with Manmohan Singh asking PM Modi to speak more often.
Singh asked Modi to “follow his own advice” to him and “speak more often”. In an interview to The Indian Express, Singh said: “I think the Prime Minister should follow his own advice to me and he should speak more often. Through press (reports), I know that he used to criticise me for not speaking up. I feel that the advice that he used to give me, he should follow it himself.”
Hitting out at the PM, Singh said that Modi’s failure to speak gave the people a chance to think that they could get away with anything would any action being taken against them. He added that he was glad that the PM broke his silence and assured that “daughters of India” will get justice.
He also blamed Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti for not handling the Kathua rape case properly. He claimed that her approach to the case might have been affected by her coalition partner, BJP. “There are bound to be pressures…but if it is carried to such an extent that you can condone the sad demise of an eight-year-old girl having been raped and kept for a week in a temple, that is the most shocking thing,” Singh said.
He accused the Centre of turning a blind eye to law and order issues in the country just a year before the general elections in 2019. “People are misusing the authority of government. They think they can get away with it…law and order is the responsibility of state governments. The BJP government at the Centre could send instructions to its state governments to ensure that law and order is properly enforced, and minorities and Dalits and women are treated properly,” he said.
