PM insulted people of Karnataka, must apologise: Congress
New Delhi, May 4: The Congress on Friday accused Prime Minister Narendra Modi of insulting the city of Bengaluru and the people of Karnataka through his remarks during campaigning and sought an apology from him.
Congress spokesperson Abhishek Manu Singhvi said that the Prime Minister had heaped a "special insult" on Bengaluru and its citizens by calling it a "city of sins" and "city of garbage".
"He (Modi) has insulted the people of Karnataka, insulted its entrepreneurs, IT technologists by labelling the city, which is known as India's Silicon Valley, as 'valley of sin'," Singhvi said.
"A city and a state which symbolises development, aspirations, youth, opportunities, has been reduced to city of sins. This is a special insult that the Prime Minister has heaped upon Bengaluru and people of Karnataka," he added.
Prime Minister Modi, while addressing a rally in Bengaluru on Thursday, had accused the state's Congress government of having reduced Bengaluru to a valley of sins from Silicon Valley, and added that the city had been changed from a garden city to garbage city, from computer city to crime city, and from a start-up hub to a pothole club.
Taking strong exception to Modi's remarks, Singhvi said that the remarks and the language used were "totally unbefitting of a Prime Minister".
"While terming it as ‘city of sin', the Prime Minister totally ignored that ‘S' stands for superior, ‘I' stands for information technology and ‘N' stands for novelty. This is what Bengaluru is. It's the real start-up hub," Singhvi said.
"But Modi only finds sin in that, and that is deplorable. You don't create jobs, can't stop farmers suicide, you have the lowest agriculture growth rate in a very, very long time and you accuse the Kannadigas of being a valley of sin. It is shameful and country needs an apology which we are never likely to get," the Congress leader said.
Singhvi said that the fear, frustration and follies of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) were growing in the face of an imminent defeat in the upcoming state assembly elections.
He said that Modi also made "false and superficial statements" regarding former Indian Army chiefs General K.M. Cariappa and General K.S. Thimayya - both Kannadigas - which proved his "lack of grasp of history" and "incapacity of his army of researchers to feed him correct information".
In an election rally in Karnataka, Modi on Thursday claimed that after the 1948 India-Pakistan war, General Thimayya was insulted by then Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru and Defence Minister Krishna Menon.
However, the Congress pointed out that in 1948 General Thimayya was not the chief of the Indian Army nor was Krishna Menon the Defence Minister.
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Pakistan reports two more polio cases; Total tally now 52
ISLAMABAD: At least two more cases of poliovirus were reported in Pakistan, taking the number of infections to 52 so far this year, a report said on Friday.
“The Regional Reference Laboratory for Polio Eradication at the National Institute of Health has confirmed the detection of two more wild poliovirus type 1 (WPV1) cases in Pakistan," an official statement said.
The fresh infections — a boy and a girl — were reported from the Dera Ismail Khan district of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province.
“Genetic sequencing of the samples collected from the children is underway," the statement read. Dera Ismail Khan, one of the seven polio-endemic districts of southern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, has reported five polio cases so far this year.
Of the 52 cases in the country this year, 24 are from Balochistan, 13 from Sindh, 13 from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, and one each from Punjab and Islamabad.
There is no cure for polio. Only multiple doses of the oral polio vaccine and completion of the routine vaccination schedule for all children under the age of five can keep them protected.
