Congress alleges questions asked to Modi were filtered and pre-decided

Two days after Prime Minister Narendra Modi addressed BJP workers from South Goa via video link, the opposition Congress Tuesday claimed the questions posed to the PM were pre-decided and not spontaneous. The prime minister had addressed booth-level workers from South Goa as well as parliamentary constituencies of Kolhapur, Hatkanangle, Madha and Satara in neighbouring Maharashtra.

"The questions that were asked during the Sunday interaction were filtered and planted through the BJP workers," Goa state Congress chief Girish Chodankar claimed in a press conference. Chodankar said BJP workers themselves had told him the questions were pre-decided.

It seems PM Modi is not able to face workers of his own party now, he said. "The PM who cannot face the media and the common people is not able to face his own workers. He lacked proper answers for the planted questions, and instead was reading through a teleprompter (during the video conferencing)," the Congress leader alleged.

He said BJP workers didn't have the freedom to ask questions to their own prime minister. Referring to the prime minister's assurance to solve the mining crisis in Goa through "judicial solutions", the Congress leader questioned the "delay" of eleven months on part of the PM in clearing his stand on the sensitive issue.

Iron ore mining in Goa has come to a standstill since March last year after the supreme court quashed all 88 mining leases renewed by the BJP government in 2015. He accused local BJP MPs and the Central government of doing nothing to restart iron ore extraction in the coastal state.