Modi must apologise: Congress after Meghalaya Guv Satya Pal Malik's 'PM arrogant' remark

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, January 3

Meghalaya Governor Satya Pal Malik’s Sunday remarks quoting Prime Minister Narendra Modi in context of farmers and their year-long agitation saw the Congress mounting a political offensive against the government and demanding the PM’s apology if the remarks were true.

“Lodge an FIR and sack Governor Malik if he is lying. If not, PM Narendra Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah must apologise. Otherwise farmers and the souls of 700 deceased will never pardon them,” Congress chief spokesperson Randeep Singh Surjewala said today.

What meghalaya governor says in video

When I went to meet the PM on farmers’ issues, he was full of arrogance. When I said 500 people had died, the PM asked if they had died for Modi.

Sack him if he’s lying: Cong

Lodge an FIR and sack Governor Malik if he is lying. If not, PM Narendra Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah must apologise. —Randeep Singh Surjewala, Cong leader

In a viral video of an event Malik addressed in Haryana’s Dadri on Sunday, he is heard complaining of “PM’s arrogance” during a meeting the two had to discuss farmers’ agitation which ended in December after the government repealed three farm laws.

“When I went to meet the PM on farmers’ issues, we ended up fighting within five minutes. He was full of arrogance. When I said 500 people had died, the PM asked if they had died for Modi. I told him yes because he has become the king on the basis of farmers’ support. The PM then told me to meet Home Minister Amit Shah who said people had clouded the PM’s vision and reason,” Malik says in the video which Leader of the Opposition in the Rajya Sabha Mallikarjun Kharge tweeted, asking the PM if the Governor’s remarks were true.

“Meghalaya’s Governor Satya Pal Malik is on record saying the PM was ‘arrogant’ on the issue of farmers and HM Amit Shah called the PM as ‘mad’. The constitutional authorities speaking about each other with such contempt! PM Modi, is this true?” asked Kharge.

AICC general secretary Surjewala later said the nation was shocked with the text of the conversation between a “BJP-appointed Governor and the PM on farmers’ agitation.”

To dishonour the memory of the deceased was regrettable, the Congress media chief said.

PM Modi insensitivity towards farmers: BKU

Chandigarh: Jagdeep Singh Aulakh, core committee member of the BKU (Charuni), said the Satya Pal Malik video row had exposed PM Narendra Modi’s lack of sensitivity towards farmers’ issues. “If PM Modi had been sensitive to farmers’ issues, it would not have taken a year for his government to roll back the three contentious farm laws,” he claimed.

General secretary of the Bharti Kisan Union-Lakhowal Harinder Singh Lakhowal said the PM should not have shown disrespect to the farmers. “It was owing to arrogance on the part of PM Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah that the farmers’ stir continued for more than a year. The PM ought to know that when people launch a stir against any decision, those at the helm of affairs have to take responsibility for the consequences,” he said. — TNS

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