Sinha urges opposition to remain united to oust BJP from power

Launching a scathing attack on Prime Minister Narendra Modi government at the Centre over a range of issues, including the skyrocketing fuel prices and the Pegasus snooping row, senior Trinamool Congress leader Yashwant Sinha on Saturday urged opposition leaders to remain united to throw it out of power.

It will be a difficult task to defeat Modi in 2024 unless the opposition parties put up a strong united face and come under a single umbrella, Sinha, who is the vice-present of TMC said.

He cautioned that if they failed to exhibit a strong unity, the ruling dispensation will continue to harass the prominent opposition party leaders through national investigative agencies such as the CBI and ED.

Several opposition leaders are already under the scanner of these agencies, he told mediapersons here.

On the Pegasus snooping controversy, Sinha, who was in the Atal Bihari Vajpayee cabinet, said the Modi government was reticent when opposition leaders sought a reply from the prime minister on it as well as its deal with Israel over the use of the spyware developed in that country.

He also compared the Pegasus row with the Watergate scandal in the US.

The Pegasus issue had caused disruption in the proceedings of the Parliament in the last monsoon session.

The Supreme Court had on Wednesday appointed a three-member panel of cyber experts to probe the alleged use of Pegasus for surveillance of certain people in the country saying every citizen needs protection against violation of privacy. Attacking the Modi government for the unprecedented hike in fuel prices, Sinha said its ''wrong policies'' were responsible for the situation.

''The wrong policies of the Modi government have crippled the country's economy and the galloping prices of petroleum products have hit the people hard, particularly the poor and the down trodden,'' he said.

The skyrocketing price of diesel has hit hard the transportation sector and prices of essential commodities like vegetables and edible oils have increased manifold and have gone out of the reach of the common people, he added.

(This story has not been edited by Devdiscourse staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)