Congress will discard Manmohan Singh like other leaders outside Gandhi family: Ravi Shankar Prasad

Union Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad

Defending Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s “raincoat jibe” at his predecessor Manmohan Singh, the BJP on Thursday attacked the Congress, saying that the party would use Singh as long he is “useful” but would later discard him like it had done with leaders outside the Gandhi family.

At the party headquarters, Union Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad defended Modi and attacked Congress president Sonia Gandhi and vice-president Rahul Gandhi. Terming the Congress as a “conglomeration believing in divinity and devotion to a family”, he insisted that there was nothing wrong about Modi’s comment in the Rajya Sabha that Singh knew the art of taking bath wearing a raincoat as he remained untainted despite all the scams in his government. He said Singh, who had called demonetisation “organised loot and legalised plunder”, was likely to have read from a note written by some other Congress leader as such strong expressions are alien to his vocabulary.

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“The PM is responding to it (Singh’s demonetisation remark). Why are they (Congress) so troubled with this? Fun, pun, repartee and exchange of mild or strong words are part of parliamentary convention,” he said.

“The Congress has two sets of leaders. Ones who come from the family are beyond criticism. They cannot make a mistake. The second set of leaders are those who are used for political convenience and then discarded. Manmohan Singh also has his utility… those outside the family are useful, expendable entities,” he said.