Rahul Gandhi Goes Mobile Again; This Time Asks Why PM Modi Did Not Buy His Phone From BHEL

As elections to the legislative assemblies of Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan – considered a precursor to the General Election due next summer –approach, Congress president Rahul Gandhi’s frenzied attacks on the incumbent Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government as well as Prime Minister Narendra Modi have increased manifold.

After attacking Modi over alleged irregularities in the Rafale deal with France in the Lok Sabha during the debate on the No Confidence Motion where he hugged Modi, the Congress leader has attacked Modi once again.

In a speech made in Chhattisgarh yesterday (10 August), Gandhi asked why Modi did not use a mobile phone manufactured by Bharat Heavy Electricals Limited (BHEL), reports Hindi daily Jansatta.

In the video, posted on Twitter by BJP spokesperson Samit Patra, Gandhi is seen asking “why did he not buy a phone from BHEL?” before terming it the cellphone gotala or cellphone scam.

One of the several public sector undertakings (PSUs) in the engineering sector, BHEL does not manufacture mobile phones. BHEL’s primary products include heavy machinery including generators, turbines, motors, pumpsets, and locomotives.

Electronics are manufactured by two other PSUs – Bharat Electronics Limited (BEL) and Electronics Corporation of India Limited (ECIL) – of which neither manufacture mobile phones. The last major PSU, Bharat Earth Movers Limited (BEML) manufactures earthmovers, metro trainsets, and dumpers.

The only PSU to manufacture telecom equipment is the Indian Telephone Industries Limited (ITIL). Based out of Doorvaninagar in Bengaluru, it used to manufacture landline phones but now only manufacturers equipment such as routers, switches and exchanges.

This isn’t the first time Rahul Gandhi has goofed up while talking about mobile phones. In 2017, during the run-up to the Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh assembly elections, he famously said that everytime someone took a selfie, a Chinese youth got a job. In a bid to demonise Modi’s Make In India initiative, Gandhi missed out on the part where India went from having only one to 104 mobile hardware manufacturing units had come up.

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