Manmohan Singh to PM Modi: ‘Follow your own advice to me and speak more often’

Taking a dig at Prime Minister Narendra Modi, his predecessor Manmohan Singh said that the former “should follow his own advice to me and speak more often.”

Singh expressed his views in an interview with the Indian Express while speaking over the silence that Modi maintained following the rape cases in Kathua and Unnao that have enraged the entire country.

PM Modi finally spoke about the rape cases during an event on the birth anniversary of Dr BR Ambedkar and said that “daughters of India” will get justice and the guilty won’t be spared, which Singh appreciated.

In the run up to the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, numerous BJP leaders had mocked Singh calling him “Maun-Mohan Singh” when he did not address the nation on certain issues during the final months of his tenure. Nonetheless, Singh told the paper that he had dealt with comments on his silence his entire life.

“But I think the Prime Minister should follow his own advice to me and he should speak more often. Through press (reports) I know that he used to criticize me for not speaking up. I feel that the advice that he used to give me, he should follow it himself.”

“I do feel that those in authority must speak up in time to give a lead to their followers,” he said, adding that many people believed they could get away with impunity only because Modi did not say anything regarding certain issues.

He also pointed out that the Congress government had amended laws surrounding heinous crimes following the 2012 Delhi gangrape.

Hitting out at J&K Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti, Singh said that she could have taken the issue seriously right from the start and claimed that it is possible her coalition partner BJP may have pressurised her to go slow as BJP ministers were allegedly involved in the matter.

Singh said, “There are bound to be pressures…but if it is carried to such an extent that you can condone the sad demise of an eight-year-old girl having been raped and kept for a week in a temple that is the most shocking thing.”

Being the father of three daughters, it was shocking to Singh that the victim was so young that she didn’t even know the difference between Hindu and Muslim. “The fact that an attempt was made by the BJP to give the incident a communal colour is disgraceful,” Singh was quoted as saying.

Criticising numerous BJP-ruled state governments, Singh blamed authorities for “turning a blind eye” towards law and order, safety of women, lynching incidents of members of the minority community and the hardships that Dalits were facing.

He went on to say, “People are misusing the authority of government. They think they can get away with it…law and order is the responsibility of state governments. The BJP government at the Centre could send instructions to its state governments to ensure that law and order is properly enforced, and minorities and Dalits and women are treated properly.”