Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday derided the Opposition alliance INDIA as the most directionless the country had ever seen and cited reviled names such as East India Company and Indian Mujahideen to assert that people cannot be misled merely by the use of the country's name.
Parliamentary Affairs Minister Pralhad Joshi said the prime minister told the BJP Parliamentary Party meeting that the conduct of the opposition has been such that it has decided to stay in opposition.
BJP leader Ramesh Bidhuri said the prime minister said even those wanting to break the country had names like East India Company and Indian Mujahideen, but people will not be misled by these gimmicks.
Former Union Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said Modi told BJP leaders that Indian National Congress and East India Company were founded by foreign nationals.
He said people were also using names such as Indian Mujahideen and Popular Front of India and their realities were quite different from what they tried to project.
Other leaders attending the meeting said the prime minister remarked that there was never such an aimless and directionless opposition in the country.
Modi said the opposition was frustrated and disappointed and its conduct shows that it has made up its mind to remain in the opposition.
He expressed confidence that the BJP will come to power after the 2024 polls with people's support, asserting that India will become the third largest economy in his government's next tenure.
With opposition parties rallying around the name of their alliance 'INDIA', Modi hit back at them saying it is just an attempt to mislead people, sources said.
He took names of several organisations with the name of 'India' to make the point that merely having such a term in their nomenclature does not change anything, the sources said.
As many as 26 opposition parties have launched the Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance (INDIA) to take on the BJP-led NDA in the Lok Sabha elections next year.