Rahul Gandhi calls PM 'puppet king' of 'tempo billionaires'

NEW DELHI: Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Saturday took a jibe at Prime Minister Narendra Modi, calling him a "puppet king" of "tempo billionaires".

Continuing his attack on Modi over his remarks on the Congress receiving "cash loaded in tempos" from "Adani and Ambani", the former Congress president shared on X some excerpts from his speech at an event in Lucknow on Friday.

"Narendra Modi is not a prime minister, he is a king. A 'puppet king' whose strings are in the hands of 'tempo billionaires'," Gandhi said also said in the post on X in Hindi.

At the Lucknow event, Gandhi had accused the prime minister of attacking the Constitution, and said he is a "king".

"Modi ji is a king... He is not the prime minister, he is a king. He has nothing to do with the Cabinet, Parliament or the Constitution. He is the king of the 21st century and is the front for two or three financiers who have the real power," Gandhi had said at the event.

At a poll rally on Wednesday, Modi had accused the Congress of having a "deal" with "Ambani and Adani", and asked if the party had received "tempo loads of black money" from the two industrialists for Gandhi to stop "abusing" them.

In a change of narrative on the "Ambani-Adani" issue, which was until now used by the Congress to attack Modi and his government at the Centre, the prime minister demanded that the party explain why it had stopped raising the issue as its "shehzada (Gandhi)" used to do for the past five years and asked if it had struck a "sauda (deal)".

Gandhi and other Congress leaders have said the prime minister should order CBI or ED probe into whether Adani and Ambani had sent black money to the party