ISLAMABAD: India's Leader of Opposition Rahul Gandhi said the country’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi was compromised through the Epstein files on Saturday, accusing him of signing deals that surrendered India's energy security, farming sector and data to foreign interests.
The Indian Opposition Leader delivered his sharpest attack on the Indian prime minister yet as he campaigned across Tamil Nadu ahead of the state's April 23 assembly election, with his speeches shared on Indian National Congress's official YouTube channel.
"He controls him through the Epstein files," Rahul Gandhi told a rally in Ranipet, referring to US President Donald Trump's alleged leverage over Modi. "He controls him because he knows Narendra Modi's financial system."
"He [Modi] signed a deal between India and the United States that sold our country out," Rahul Gandhi told the crowd. "He handed out our energy security. He gave away our data. He sold our farmers. He sold our small and medium industry."
The 55-year-old, who is the parliamentary face of the opposition Congress party, addressed rallies in Ponneri, Ranipet and Thuraiyur across Tamil Nadu on Saturday. He framed the Epstein claim within a broader argument: that Modi, having been compromised at the national level, now seeks to impose the same model of externally controlled, proxy governance on Tamil Nadu through his alliance with the regional AIADMK party. "The same way Modi has been compromised, they want a compromised chief minister to run Tamil Nadu," he said at Ponneri.
Rahul also pointed to Modi's demeanor in Parliament on Friday as evidence of a leader operating under pressure. "Yesterday you saw the face of Prime Minister Modi — completely lacking confidence," he said at Ranipet. "He could not even face the opposition. He was sitting sideways."
The parliamentary session Rahul referenced saw the opposition defeat a government bill it said disguised a redrawing of India's electoral map (a process known as delimitation) behind the cover of women's political representation. "Hidden behind that bill was a diabolical idea," he said at Ranipet. "They wanted to change the number of seats that each state gets. They wanted to weaken the South Indian states, the North Eastern states and the smaller states."
He called the attempt "an anti-national act" and said the Opposition "stood like a rock" to defeat it.
Tamil Nadu, a state of roughly 70 million people on India's southeastern tip, votes on April 23 in a single-phase election across all 234 assembly constituencies, according to the Election Commission of India. Votes will be counted on May 4. There are 56.7 million registered voters, including 28.9 million women and 27.7 million men, as per the Chief Electoral Officer of Tamil Nadu.
The BJP, which dominates India's national politics under Modi, has historically failed to win significant ground in Tamil Nadu. It has allied this cycle with the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK), a Dravidian regional party rooted in Tamil identity, socialism and secularism. Gandhi's Congress is allied with the rival Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK), which governs the state under Chief Minister M.K. Stalin.
Rahul Gandhi was unsparing on the AIADMK alliance. "The BJP has hollowed out and destroyed the AIADMK," he said at Ponneri. "There is nothing known as the AIADMK. It has been eaten up from the inside by Narendra Modi and Amit Shah [Indian Home Affairs Minister]. It is a hollow shell." He told AIADMK workers directly that their party's leadership had been "fully captured" and was now functioning as an instrument for BJP to enter Tamil Nadu.
He said the BJP's agenda was an assault on Tamil language and identity. "They want to attack Tamil language, they want to distort Tamil history, they want to twist Tamil culture," he said.
"The BJP and RSS are ignorant people. They do not understand who the Tamil people are." He accused the central government of withholding $216 million in education funds owed to Tamil Nadu and of blocking construction of a federal medical institute in Madurai.
The Indian Opposition Leader closed with a cultural pledge that drew the loudest response of the rally. "There is no force on this planet that can touch Tamil Nadu or its language," he told the Ponneri crowd, according to the Indian National Congress's official Facebook post.
The DMK-Congress alliance outlined six economic guarantees: ₹2,000 ($21.6) per month to every woman in the state; equal amounts for senior citizens and people with disabilities; ₹2,000 ($21.6) monthly college scholarships; ₹2,500 ($27) per month in food security transfers; free property registration for first-time women buyers; and a commitment to fill all government vacancies within 300 days.
Modi held his own rally in Coimbatore on Saturday, as reported by The Hindu.
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