Mocking the prime minister's 'chowkidar' campaign, Congress president Rahul Gandhi on Monday said Narendra Modi was attempting to convert the whole country into chowkidars after being "caught" in the Rafale fighter jet deal.
Attacking Modi's "Main bhi chowkidar' (I too am watchman) blitz, he said "Chowkidar was caught indulging in theft and as he was caught, chowkidar says the whole of Hindustan is chowkidar.
"But before getting caught, the entire Hindustan was not chowkidar."
Gandhi stepped up the attack a day after Bharatiya Janata Party intensified its "Main bhi chowkidar" campaign with Modi and other party leaders, including its president Amit Shah prefixing the word chowkidar to their names in their Twitter profile.
Modi's Twitter account profile identified him as "Chowkidar Narendra Modi" as did other BJP leaders in a coordinated campaign against Gandhi's sustained "chowkidar chor hai" jibe at the prime minister over the Rafale deal.
"Before getting caught only Narendra Modi was chowkidar. Thief has been caught (chor pakdagaya).
The whole country knows that "Chowkidar chor hai", Gandhi said at a public rally in Kalaburagi, Lok Sabha constituency of Congress leader Mallikarjun Kharge in north Karnataka.
He told the crowd, "You had said -- Chowkidar chor hai. But yesterday and day-before-yesterday Narendra Modi was attempting to turn whole country into chowkidars."
Gandhi said, "When he became prime minister, he said don't make me prime minister, make me chowkidar, do you remember? He had never said make whole of Hindustan into chowkidaars."
At an interaction with entrepreneurs in Bengaluru, Gandhi claimed that Modi and Anil Ambani would land in jail if the documents of parallel negotiations with the French government by the Prime Minister's Office become part of an inquiry into the Rafale deal.
"If the documents become part of inquiry, Modi and Ambani would go to jail. Why is he not having an inquiry? That's why this campaign 'Chowkidar Chor Hai'...," Gandhi said.
He also said, "If the prime minister wasn't guilty, he should have said -- I'm investigating this thing , the people who are responsible are going to jail... why is he not doing that?"
"My friends in the media... these days they are pressurised, they are controlled, so they don't really like to talk about these things," Gandhi said while talking about Rafale.
He said he could give a list of defence contracts that Anil Ambani and "Modi's friends have been given, one after the other, and they have only got caught on Rafale, which happens to be the really big contract in the world. So that's why everybody is saying chowkidar chor hai."
Gandhi said in the country today, there is an environment "which is angry, where there is tension, viciousness -- you don't just close your mind, you close the entire ecosystem."
"What is happening today is India's liberal nature, India's open system, India's institutions are being attacked, they are being suppressed... with the bad environment you are going nowhere."
At the Kalaburagi rally, the Congress president charged the prime minister and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh with attempting to scrap the Constitution.
"It is Narendra Modi's wish that just as he scrapped Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 currency notes through demonetisation, he wants to scrap the Constitution," Gandhi said.
Gandhi said the Congress would never let Modi and RSS succeed in their mission.
Elaborating, Gandhi alleged that the note ban was effected without asking the Reserve Bank of India.
He also alleged that the Supreme Court was not allowed to function while the Election Commission was being pressurised.
The Congress president accused Modi of spreading hatred between different faiths.
