Climaxing eight months of nationwide campaigning from the time he was declared the BJP’s official Prime Ministerial nominee on September 13, 2013, topped with a gruelling 46-day segment dubbed Bharat Vijay Rally, Narendra Modi gave a clarion call for a strong Government with a robust majority at the Centre at his last rally at Ballia on Saturday evening.
Summing up his awesome schedule before an enthralled audience that repeatedly chanted his name, the BJP strongman who, Atlas-like, bore virtually the entire burden of the campaign on his shoulders, sparing a fair amount of time and energy to NDA partners in all States, mused that the people may have been surprised to see him moving around the whole country daily and wondered how he could sustain the campaign.
It was thanks to the arrangements made by the BJP, he said, that he travelled 3 lakh kilometres across the nation and interacted with people in a total of 5800 locations in all, something that has never happened before in the history of Indian elections. “I went without tiring, without stopping, and without stooping”, he said to thunderous applause from the crowd, “to meet the children of India for their blessings”.
These marathon interactions included the Chai pe Charcha programmes through which he personally interacted with people at 4000 locations across the country, taking questions and answering them directly through an imaginative use of technology. This programme, he reminded the people who cheered loudly, was a “fitting reply to those who mocked at him for selling tea”, a reference to Congress leader Mani Shankar Aiyar’s jibe at the AICC session at Talkatora Stadium that Narendra Modi could be provided with a stall to sell tea to the gathering if he so desired. Those who mocked at him for selling tea, he predicted, “will never dare abuse Modi again”. Ab ki baar… the people responded in unison. “I sold tea, but I never sold the nation” he said grimly.
One of the wonders (ajooba) of this election, he continued, was his 3D sabhas, which covered 1300 cities and locations in the country and established a world record. No country in the world and no politician, even in advanced countries like America, Russia, China, Canada or Australia have done this, yet a poor country like India took this leap forward, he said. Interacting with the audience in his trademark style, he asked, “Was one held here also?” And when the crowd responded, “Yes”, he queried, “Did you like it?” to which they chanted in the affirmative.
Continuing, Narendra Modi said he addressed over 550 rallies in person in order to appear before the people in person and seek their blessings. No journalist or politician would have travelled so far and wide in the country, he claimed, “Gujarat or UP, east or west, I have gone everywhere and I can give you a first-hand report. Do you want it?” When the people demanded an answer, he predicted that in many States the Congress would not open its account at all. As the people chanted with glee, he said, “write this down – there will be no State where the Congress will cross 9 seats”.
The Congress loyalists (chele chapaate), he predicted to the gleeful gathering, “…will not be seen in the coming Parliament”. The Samajwadi Party, Bahujan Samaj Party and the Congress, he insisted, all have one master, viz., Sonia madam… In Lucknow these parties pretend to be rivals, but in Delhi they unite to save the UPA and loot the nation. Thus, the kushti (rivalry) becomes dosti (friendship) in Delhi, they eat in one plate, he averred, and they are fed (taken care of) by Sonia Gandhi.
Ballia, Narendra Modi recalled, is the bhumi of Mangal Pandey; it is the land which sparked the flame of freedom, swarajya, and today Ballia must take the lead in igniting the flame of surajya, good governance. Calling it his good fortune to have begun his Bharat Vijay campaign at Vaishno Devi in Udhampur district of Jammu on March 26 and to end it in the land of Mangal Pandey, the BJP veteran reminisced that the 2014 election was most unusual as for the first time in the history of the nation was there such heavy polling, which has strengthened our democracy and presented a unique case study to the world. The crowds that attended his rallies were also unprecedented, he mused.
Focusing briefly on the UPA misrule of the past 10 years, Narendra Modi observed that the Congress leaders were so arrogant that they never once addressed the critical issues of price rise, crushing corruption, beheading of jawans, farmer suicides which have touched a grim two lakh, and the serious problem of encephalitis in Poorvanchal which has taken the lives of one lakh children already. “Who will care for the afflicted and their families”, he asked; the crowd chanted, “Modi Modi”.
The mother-son duo, he said jocularly, never used to mention his name, but as pressure from the people mounted, they began to take it all the time. But what do they say, he pondered, and replied, “Modi roko” (stop Modi). Whether it is the mother-son (Sonia-Rahul) or father-son (Mulayam-Akhilesh) or uncle (Ram Gopal Yadav) or other chatte batte (loyalists), they all chant, “Modi roko”. Wondering aloud why these parties and leaders were so scared, he said it was because after May 16 they would all be nowhere. “Should we forgive those who have looted the nation, those who have cheated the nation, those responsible for the ruination of the nation,” he asked rhetorically, and as the crowds shouted, “No! No!”, asserted that this was the reason for the fear that has stricken his opponents.
Winding up his speech, Narendra Modi lamented that his rally in Ghosi had to be cancelled because the BJP district president Sushil Rai had died in a road accident while returning from the preparations for the rally that morning. Condoling his death, the BJP veteran promised the people of Ghosi that he would return to the district as soon as possible after the election process was over.
Niticentral.com, 10 May 2014