‘Grip too strong?’: Rahul Gandhi targets PM over workers, farmers and US deal

Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Thursday accused the government of ignoring the voices of workers and farmers while taking decisions that affect their future, and questioned whether Prime Minister Narendra Modi would now listen to them or whether there was a “grip” on him that was too strong.

His remarks came a day after he described the proposed India–US interim trade agreement as a “wholesale surrender,” alleging that it compromised India’s energy security and farmers’ interests.

In a post in Hindi on X, the leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha said, “Today, lakhs of workers and farmers across the country are on the streets to raise their voices for their rights.”

Rahul Gandhi said workers were apprehensive that the four labour codes would dilute their rights and weaken hard-won protections. Farmers, he added, feared that the trade agreement with the US could adversely impact their livelihoods. He also expressed concern that weakening or scrapping the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MNREGA) would deprive villages of their last remaining economic safety net.

“Will Modiji listen now? Or is there a ‘grip’ on him that is too strong? I stand firmly with the issues and struggles of workers and farmers,” Rahul Gandhi said.

On Wednesday, while participating in the debate on the Union Budget in the Lok Sabha, Gandhi had launched a sharp attack on the Modi government, alleging that Indian interests had been “surrendered” under the trade deal to protect what he termed the BJP’s “financial architecture.”

Criticising the Indo–US agreement, he used a martial arts analogy, saying that after securing a grip, the next step is a chokehold, and eventually the opponent taps out — suggesting that India had yielded under pressure.

Rahul Gandhi also stressed the need to safeguard the country’s people, data, food supply and energy systems in what he described as an increasingly uncertain global environment. He maintained that had an INDIA bloc government negotiated the trade pact, it would have told US President Donald Trump to treat India as an equal partner in the discussions.

With PTI inputs