The loose language and body language of Congress leaders, particularly its leading family, reeks of its impending defeat, especially since the one person around whom the whole campaign was being conducted has run away and is nowhere to be seen for the past three-four days, Narendra Modi taunted during the course of a massive 3-D outreach on Friday evening.
Whereas he and all the big leaders of the BJP have tried to communicate the party’s vision of India and their plans to get the nation out of the present morass, the Congress and its ‘helper’ parties (those not part of the UPA) seem to have lost the plot and talk endlessly about issues that have nothing to do with politics and waste time and energy (an allusion to issues like his allegedly saying that Priyanka Vadra was ‘like his daughter’ and her foolish riposte). Some smart persons quit before the elections and some are running away now, he joked, while pointing to the absence of a major leader at a critical stage of the election campaign.
Sharpening his response to the escalating campaign against him, the BJP Prime Ministerial candidate said that Sanjaya Baru’s recent book has exposed the fact that the UPA regime was run by the mother-son duo and not the Prime Minister, and that is why he calls the Government ‘ma beta ki sarkar’. Why do you not respond to these charges, he asked Congress president Sonia Gandhi, why do your party leaders get upset and why does the PMO gave statements saying that the Prime Minister has given 1100 speeches? He may well have given 1100 speeches, but the moot question is who ran the country, who decided policy, was it the Planning Commission headed by the Prime Minister or the National Advisory Council headed by Sonia Gandhi, he asked and demanded an answer to the question why after 60 years of Congress rule and alleged concern for the poor, 90 per cent homes in the country still have no piped water; 95 per cent have no sanitation, and 90 per cent have no electricity. If you do not answer Baru’s charges, he insisted, then it means that his statements are true.
The ruling party is in so much panic, he pointed out, that whereas it initially spoke of winning the election, it quickly degenerated to thinking up schemes to somehow stop him (Modi) and foster instability by talking of supporting/propping up a Third Front, uncaring how much this could hurt the nation and particularly the youth. Is this what the Congress has come to, he asked, have you nothing else to give to the nation?
Two generations have been ruined already, and two more will be sacrificed if there is political instability, he said, urging the people to recognise the dirty tricks of the Congress. Abuses, defamation and character assassination have been his lot since the Congress became convinced that it was losing. It has now intensified the chanting of the secularism mantra and attempts to create confusion by promoting a third front.
Making it clear for the first time that he has left Gujarat for Kashi as part of his promise to develop eastern India and bring the States of this region at par with the better developed western region, to which the BJP manifesto also gives priority, Narendra Modi said, “I came to Kashi to join this effort to live among you and serve this area like I served Gujarat, to make a change to the region. I have left the west for east India, I have come as a son”. Alluding to the remaining phases of polling on May 7 and 12, he said, “can you not give all seats to me?”
Demolishing the Congress’s claims of concern for Muslim welfare, the BJP’s Prime Ministerial candidate accused Sonia Gandhi of caring for neither Hindus nor Muslims, but being concerned solely with power and family, and being willing to sacrifice the nation for the ambition of putting her son on the chair.
Muslims have constantly been used as vote fodder, he charged, a fact exposed in the Sachar Committee report which showed that the best work for minorities in India, in terms of development, education and employment, was done in Gujarat. He asked why these facts were not put before the nation and said the Congress only wanted to keep Muslims poor and uneducated for political gains. “I took the risk to say that Muslim youth must have the Koran in one hand and computer in the other. A modern India is a dream of mine. I said madrassas must modernize, youth must study and be empowered in order to walk with the times”, he said and asked what the Congress did. The Kundu Committee which said that the 15 point programme made to implement the Sachar report was best implemented in Gujarat, and now that report too is being hidden.
On October 27, 2013, at the biggest ever rally in Bihar, when bombs were going off and people died, the crowds stayed put because they did not want to leave him (Modi), “I took the responsibility and stood my ground and asked the Hindus if they wanted to fight Muslims, and I asked the Muslims if they wanted to fight Hindus, or if they could both fight poverty together”, he said. “I say the same today, I am proud to live for such a state. I will return this love with development”.
Worse, he pointed out, there were terrible riots in Rajasthan under Congress’s rule (a reference to the Gopalgarh riots), many people died, but was justice done to their families, he asked. Why are the secularists quiet, he thundered. Even today, ministers of the Congress regime in Rajasthan are in jail for their misdeeds, but the party never admits any wrong, never explains, never apologises, he said. “I challenge this secularism” he said.
Condemning Sonia Gandhi for the gimmicks being used to win elections, he said the party had got Lalu Yadav out of jail to fight elections, but did not appear on the same dais with him to fool the people. He denounced the media for not challenging this dishonesty. Alluding to the release of another notorious gangster who is helping in the opposition campaign against him in Varanasi, he said these tricks showed the depth to which the party was willing to sink in order to defeat him. The nation will not forgive this, he averred.
The Congress fooled Hindus with the promise to clean the Ganga and thousands of crores of rupees disappeared on this pretext, he decried, and asked where the money had gone. In the Kedarnath disaster, a major pilgrimage was destroyed, but there is no responsibility for the inability to help the victims and restore the place.
Modern communications, he said, have made it impossible to fool the people in the old way, and hence lies and subterfuge will not work. The Congress, he insisted, will have to explain the inability to control prices, provide 10 crore jobs, and the spiralling corruption that the regime is drowning in. The country’s reputation for rape and crimes against women is tarnished internationally, and has even hit the tourism sector badly, further hurting the employment potential in the unorganized sector. The Congress ruled states are the worst offenders in this regard, and women are much safer in BJP ruled states.
Appealing to the electorate in the remaining two phases of the election to robustly vote for the BJP, he said he saw elections as a celebration of democracy, an occasion for political parties to come forward with their ideas and vision for the future and to account for their past performance. Revealing that he had addressed 900 3D sabhas and 400 rallies in person, he said he had done his utmost to reach the people all over the nation “in spirit”, to respect democracy and to tell them what he wished to do to serve them.
Niticentral.com, 2 May 2014