Congress president Rahul Gandhi has promised that paramilitary personnel who are killed in action will be granted status of "martyrs" if the Congress comes to power. Rahul made this promise during an interactive session with university students at 'Shiksha, Disha aur Dasha' event in Delhi on Saturday.
The promise gains significance in the light of recent terror attack in Pulwama which claimed the lives of 40 CRPF jawans on February 14, who were later denied martyr status.
"Soldiers of paramilitary forces should get the status of martyrs. If our government comes to power, they will get that status," Rahul said.
The Congress chief commented extensively on the education sector under the NDA-led government. Talking at length about education in the country, he said that education must be empowering and forgiving. “Education must be empowering, and forgiving. Students must be comfortable with
making mistakes. They must be encouraged to learn from their mistakes,” he said.
Though he commented that the state must pay for a large part of education of students, the crowd did not respond. He also alleged that funds for education sector had seen massive reduction over the last five years.
"There is a massive decline now in education system compared to ours (UPA regime). When we were in power in UPA, we opened more than 20-24 universities and in the last five years, only one university was opened," he said while attacking the NDA government.
Rahul Gandhi continued his attack against the Narendra Modi government by firing fresh salvo at the Centre on the job crisis. He said that the government "did not want to accept" that there was a "job crisis" in the country. He suggested that the PM should hold discussions with the youth to address the issue.
He reiterated the per hour job figures to attack the prime minister on the issue. "In a county of over 1.2 billion people, and India is creating about 450 jobs per 24 hours while China is creating 50,000 jobs in the same 24 hours,"he said, claiming, "these are not my figures, but of the Finance Ministry given in Lok Sabha". "Our prime minister doesn't seem to think this is a problem," Gandhi alleged. "We need to first acknowledge that there is a problem, and then we need to galvanise support to fight it. That is what we (Congress) believe in," he said.
Gandhi said he has already challenged Prime Minister Modi to debate with him on Rafale, corruption, job and other issues. "But has he come and interacted with you (students) like this, taking questions from you," the Congress president asked the students.
(With inputs from PTI)
