Congress’s righteous indignation over Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ‘raincoat’ jibe at Manmohan Singh would have been amusing had it not been patently tragic. Halfway through Narendra Modi’s Rajya Sabha address on Wednesday, members of India’s grand old party walked out in a huff.
All through the evening for the next few hours, adopting an expression somewhere between apoplectic rage and stunned disbelief, Congress leaders used the choicest sound bites to lay into Modi, calling him unworthy of PM’s post. They also demanded an apology, failing which they threatened to boycott the prime minister in Parliament.
The source of Congress’s fury was a remark by Modi during his reply to the motion on the President’s address when he made satiric observations on former PM Manmohan Singh’s ability to stay unblemished while scams raged all around him.
During Singh’s two stints as PM, the UPA was mired in several big-ticket rip-offs costing the public exchequer lakhs of crores. While Singh’s personal integrity never came under intense scrutiny, as the head of a Union Cabinet some of whose members were neck-deep in graft, the economist-turned-politician cannot be absolved of all responsibility.
