Amit Shah slams Rahul Gandhi's Berkeley speech, says some leaders are 'scared to speak in front of their own countrymen'

Kolkata: Taking an obvious swipe at Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi, BJP President Amit Shah on Tuesday said some opposition leaders are delivering speeches abroad as no one in the country wanted to listen to them. [caption id=“attachment_4033831” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  File image of BJP chief Amit Shah. PTI[/caption] “Some of these leaders go abroad and give speeches there. They are scared to speak in front of their own countrymen. Nobody in the country wants to listen to them,” Shah said during a meeting. In a broadside at the erstwhile UPA government led by the Congress at the Centre, Shah said the nation’s people had to wait for months to listen to the then prime minister speak. “All ministers in that government used to think of themselves as prime minister and the actual prime minister was not regarded as the prime minister by anybody,” Shah said claiming that the nation has come a long way in terms of development under the present NDA government. Shah’s comments came hours after Rahul Gandhi’s address to the students of University of California at Berkeley in the United States, where he criticised the present central government for its handling of the economy and over the growing polarisation in the country. BJP leader and information technology minister Smriti Irani earlier accused Gandhi of choosing a platform of convenience for beating his political opponents after “failing to connect with the people of India”.