With the Congress doggedly adhering to a campaign based on divine-right-to-rule, Narendra Modi sharpened his attack on party vice president Rahul Gandhi for meaningless prattle, and lambasted the Samajwadi Party and Bahujan Samaj Party for having a tacit understanding with the Congress at the Centre while pretending to fight it in Uttar Pradesh. At raucous gatherings in Jhansi, Fatehpur and Unnao in Uttar Pradesh on Sunday, before proceeding to Srirampur (West Bengal), the BJP’s Prime Ministerial candidate maintained a gruelling campaign schedule to exhort the people not to slacken in the quest for change in the style and substance of governance at the Centre.
Condemning the lawlessness and insecurity in the Samajwadi-ruled State, where even the toughest (pehalwan) procure gun licenses for survival, he said it was unfortunate that youth who should have pens or ploughs in their hands are toting guns to move around the State. With law and order in such a mess, it was high time the regime was asked to go, he said, and called for an end to the cycle of consecutive rule by the Samajwadi Party and the BSP, with the Congress covertly exploiting the situation to its advantage.
Rahul bhaiya’s assertions, he mocked, are getting more and more laughable by the day, and the media should telecast these for the benefit of the people. These days, the mother-son duo is in Gujarat. Here, Rahul bhaiya gave a speech to the effect that luckily there is no Lokayukta in Gujarat or the ‘chowkidar’ (an allusion to the Chief Minister) would have been jailed.
“Your speech writers are determined to destroy you,” Narendra Modi taunted the Congress vice president, “your mother’s advisers whom you don’t get along with, are giving you false inputs”. Not only is there a Lokayukta in Gujarat, he pointed out, but in the last session of the Vidhan Sabha, the Lokayukta filed a report, which was tabled in the House, which stated that former Congress Chief Minister Amarsinh Choudhary was guilty of illegally felling trees in the jungles of the State. Since Amarsinh Choudhary is no more and Indian culture calls for respect for the dead, “we kept quiet,” Narendra Modi thundered, but the Congress vice president should know that Choudhary’s son is a Minister in the UPA. “You keep telling lies,” he charged.
So clueless is Rahul Gandhi that he claimed that there are 27,000 crore unfilled jobs/posts in Gujarat! Pointing out that Gujarat has a population of just 6 crore, and India a population of 125 crore, Narendra Modi said 27,000 crore is far above the world population. As the crowd chanted “shame, shame”, he asked, “Can we give the country to this man?”; they shouted “No” in unison.
Another thing that Rahul bhaiya said is unrepeatable, Narendra Modi chuckled, and as the people shouted to be told, said “you can find it on YouTube”. As the shouting rose to a crescendo, he mellowed and said, “OK I will tell half”. Continuing, he said that he (Modi) had previously stated that the White Revolution (milk) in Gujarat had improved nutrition in families, to which Rahul Gandhi retorted that “in Gujarat, two out of one children is malnourished”.
Chortling that the Congress leader never even realised what he was saying, Narendra Modi said, “I feel ashamed, what kind of neta is this. He is the Congress’s Prime Ministerial candidate, but see his mind; two out of one kids is malnourished…” Rubbing it in, he said, “It is my naseeb (fate) that I have to deal with this”. Soon the popular comedy show by Kapil Sharma will be nixed in favour of snippets from Rahul Gandhi’s election gaffes, he predicted.
“Have you ever seen a government in which the Prime Minister does not stand for elections, the top ministers run away from the contest?” he mused, predicting that the Congress would not open its account in some states, would not touch two digits in some, and would draw zero in most. The Congress is the oxygen for the SP and BSP and vice versa, he charged; they pretend to wrestle in UP but unite in Delhi to share the spoils, and hence they must be booted out together.
At Jhansi in Bundelkhand region, where Uma Bharati is contesting, Narendra Modi lamented that a region which still reverberated with the memory of the Rani of Jhansi, was so neglected by parliamentarians that there is no drinking water despite the presence of rivers, and no crops despite hard working farmers. Uma Bharati, he assured the gigantic crowds that waited patiently for over three hours to hear him, knows the region, understands the problems, and knows how to mitigate them.
The SP, he said, has fragmented into four groups. One is limited to the photograph of Ram Manohar Lohia, the second is a Sukhwadi (enjoyment) party, then there is the Stri Virodhi (anti-women) party and finally the Samaj Virodhi (anti-people) party, and all four units (kumbhas) move about on a cycle. Uma Bharati, he said, has rightly pointed out that the test of the Election Commission in UP will be how free and fair elections are held in the midst of the State’s gun toting culture, and asked why the Election Commission had kept quiet when there was firing in areas where the Mulayam Singh Yadav family was contesting elections.
At Fatehpur, where an Assembly bye-election is being contested alongside the Lok Sabha poll, Narendra Modi said that the constituency is adjacent to Rai Bareilly where a powerful woman leader has been elected several times, and yet suffers from lack of drinking water and electricity. Asserting that the power of guns and bombs to terrorise is over, he exhorted the people to vote without fear during the seventh phase of polling on April 30. The UPA had persecuted him for 12 years, unleashing the CBI, IB, RAW and even income tax authorities after him, but they had not been able to harm him.
Training his guns on the Congress vice president, the BJP veteran said that in Amethi, 66,000 families sought work under NREGA but only 2100 families got work, a success rate of 3.15 per cent. In Rai Bareilly, 1,23,000 families asked for work under NREGA and 3,300 got employment, which works out to 1.5 per cent. If this is the fate of the UPA’s most successful programme, then the regime will need 200 years to achieve 100 per cent success. “Can you wait so long”, he asked the people, who answered in the negative.
The mother-son team is so angry with him that he wondered if they would leave him alive if they came face to face, he told the exuberant gathering, because for 60 years they had faced no challenge whatsoever. But now, a chai-wala from a poor family, whose mother did domestic work to raise her family, has challenged those with a golden spoon in their mouth. The ground has shifted, he predicted, and no one can save this corrupt regime and its allies. “In the Ganga at Kashi, I will wash the sins of this regime”, he promised, adding that he understood the pain and deprivation of poverty and would ameliorate their sufferings.
Later in the evening at Unnao, Narendra Modi informed the people that the Congress was now busy uniting all political parties to somehow derail the Modi juggernaut. Some people have bought tickets for after May 16, he joked, alluding to some prominent citizens who said they would not live in India if Narendra Modi became the Prime Minister. Unnao too, he observed, lacks minimal development in terms of drinking water and electricity, yet Sonia ji only begs god to save her sinful regime which is beyond help and will be punished by the people.
The UPA, he recalled, had a Foreign Minister who went to the United Nations and read out the speech of another country (Portugal). Another Minister, who suffers from verbal diarrhoea, made off with funds meant for handicapped persons, and when the scandal was exposed by a television channel, instead of dismissing him, the Congress actually promoted him. In his new incarnation as Foreign Minister, the gentleman was sent to China to discuss its intrusion into Indian territory, and there he said that Beijing was so beautiful that he wanted to live there!
Emphasising the need to defeat the Congress, SP and BSP together, Narendra Modi urged the people to return the BJP from all 80 seats in the State and vote in high numbers in the remaining phases on April 30 and Mary 7 and 12. The need of the hour, he said, is to replace the weakling UPA with a strong and decisive government at the Centre.
Niticentral.com, 27 April 2014