A day after Congress leader Rahul Gandhi lashed out against the Modi Government in the Lok Sabha, Minister for Minority Affairs   Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi on Thursday urged the Congress to shake off the “hangover of Indira is India and India is Indira.”

Asserting this point in the Rajya Sabha, Naqvi refrained from naming Rahul and said the present regime restored the credibility of the Prime Minister.  He claimed during the UPA dispensation, the Prime Minister’s Office(PMO)was run from somewhere else.  Moreover, any decision by the government was termed as “nonsense and nuisance,” Naqvi said while participating in the debate on motion of thanks on President’s address.

The Opposition slammed the government for stoking social unrest and not able to reduce poverty besides failing to provide jobs.  The government was also charged with using the investigation agencies for political vendetta.

Slamming the Congress, Naqvi said they have to get out of "Indira is India" belief to understand that there are no two Indias.  "We need to get out of the hangover of thinking of Indira is India and India is Indira and Congress is the country and the country is Congress," he said.

This sharp reaction was in response to Rahul on Wednesday  saying the President’s speech had no strategic vision and did not touch upon the main challenges that the country is facing currently including the growing gap between the extremely rich and the poor in the country.

Naqvi said Modi-led government has ended the rule of "cuts, commissions, family politics, Article 370 from Jammu and Kashmir, and brought Citizenship Amendment Act to protect religiously persecuted people".

The BJP leader said there are two India; one is of the sanatani or thinking and the other of samanti or feudal.

Listing 28 changes by the PM Modi government, Naqvi spoke on how the situation has changed since 2014 and the Modi government ended the red beacon culture and the politics of power, he said, adding "We also destroyed political appeasement."

After becoming Prime Minister, Narendra Modi made laws that were needed and removed those in which rules were not framed and these were lying for years without any use, he added.  The Minister said a total of 1,500 such unused laws were repealed.

Naqvi further said "week of riots" and "months of terrorist blasts" have come to an end, and "we replied to the neighbouring country by doing surgical strikes against its terrorist activities".

Noting that there was a time when decisions of the Supreme Court were rendered ineffectual, Naqvi said, "The government took steps to make Supreme Court's decision on Triple Talaq effective and brought forth a law to protect the rights of Muslim women."

By passing the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, 2019, Naqvi said, "Modi government provided citizenship rights to people persecuted on the basis of religion and allowed citizenship to six undocumented non-Muslim communities from Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh who entered India on or before December 31, 2014."  The Minister also added that the CAA helped in bringing the minorities from Afghanistan after the Taliban took over the country.

Criticising the present government’s policies, the Opposition said the idea of India was under threat and the gap between the rich and poor had widened.

Moreover, nearly 20 crore people slipped below the poverty line in the last few years even as the UPA regime had pulled out more than 20 crore people from poverty, the Opposition said.

The disinvestment policy also came under sharp attack with Jawhar Sircar (TMC)saying the government was selling family silver.  He also claimed the country was now witnessing “naked capitalism.”

Senior Congress leader Digvijaya Singh and Ripun Bora, K Keshava Rao(TRS) and Abdul Wahab also criticised the policies of the government.