New Delhi: The Congress on Sunday criticised Prime Minister Narendra Modi's use of labels such as 'naraaz phoopa', saying it was part of his modus operandi of giving the opposition a new adjective every year to keep his own "failures" hidden.
The opposition party also accused Modi of misusing the platform of Delhi University's Shri Ram College of Commerce (SRCC), where he addressed the centenary celebrations on Saturday, by turning it into "yet another political campaign".
Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge said, "Narendra Modi ji, yesterday, you visited SRCC at Delhi University. It was an opportunity for dialogue on the country's youth, education, and their future. But alas, instead of facing the youth's questions, the speech turned into yet another political campaign."
"Modi ji's Modus Operandi is to suppress questions in a democracy and give the opposition a new adjective every year so that his own failures remain hidden! Naraaz phoopa, Dimagi Naxal, Urban Naxal, Khan Market Gang, Andolan-jeevi, Parjeevi," Kharge said in a post in Hindi on X.
.@narendramodi जी कल दिल्ली विश्वविद्यालय के SRCC में गए। यह देश के युवाओं, शिक्षा और उनके भविष्य पर संवाद का अवसर था। लेकिन अफसोस, युवाओं के सवालों का सामना करने के बजाय भाषण फिर एक राजनीतिक प्रचार में बदल गया।
— Mallikarjun Kharge (@kharge) September 6, 2026
मोदी जी की Modus Operandi —
लोकतंत्र में सवालों को दबाने के लिए…
Kharge said the adjectives keep changing, but the Modi government's 'anti-people policies' do not.
"Modi ji, outreach is only needed when you become out of reach. The prime minister showed his 'report card'. The country's youth is also standing up with its report card, and it includes unemployment, government recruitments stuck for years, students troubled by paper leaks, increasingly expensive education, dwindling scholarship opportunities, and growing pressure on the autonomy of universities," Kharge said.
"Listen to 'Chhatron Ki Goonj' as solutions won't come from beating around the bush," Kharge said.
Congress' media and publicity department head Pawan Khera said an imposition of superiority is often the worst expression of an inferiority complex.
"After 12 years as prime minister, the fact that he still has no vision, no inspiring message, and nothing positive to offer the country's youth at a prestigious institution like SRCC and instead resorts to name-calling the opposition is a damning indictment of a prime minister who has run out of ideas, run out of substance, and apparently run out of anything meaningful to say," Khera said on X.
Modi on Saturday asserted that India was not only growing at 7.8 per cent but also creating employment opportunities despite wars and disruptions, demonstrating the country's strength. He said those responsible for pushing the economy into the "fragile five" could not digest it.
Addressing the centenary celebrations of SRCC, Modi also said that those who once spread terror had been silenced and that if Pakistan committed any misdeed, the Indian Army would strike back on its own soil.
He said that from Jammu and Kashmir to the Northeast, there was peace and Naxalism had been dismantled.
Recalling that the country was struggling on every front in 2013, when he last addressed SRCC students as Gujarat chief minister, Modi said corruption, terrorism and inflation were unchecked, but India was now far more secure economically and socially.
However, some people's frustration was increasing after seeing this, he said. "For such people, I had given a homoeopathy dose from the Red Fort (during the Independence Day address)… 'dimagi Naxal'."
"When I said 'dimagi Naxal', all such people came to the forefront and started criticising me. People who were promoting dimagi Naxalism, their true colour can be witnessed by the people," he said.
Modi said India's 7.8 per cent growth had also come at a time when the war in West Asia was ongoing and disruptions related to trade had persisted. Achieving such growth demonstrated India's strength, he said, referring to the GDP growth rate for the April-June quarter.
"We all know that those responsible for pushing India into the 'fragile five' cannot digest the numbers of India's growth," he said in a veiled attack on the Congress and its allies, which have questioned the credibility of the growth figures.
Outside the campus, the prime minister said, students would find two types of people: "those who positively transform the power of society into the power of the nation and the others who turn into angry uncles (naraaz phoopa) as soon as any work begins".
