Upping the ante against the Congress and the UPA for the remaining four phases of the election, Narendra Modi said that according to a television channel, the Income Tax department has reported that an extensive raid at the premises of a meat exporter has found that four Central Ministers, including one very close to 10 Janpath, were involved in a hawala racket under the cover of the meat business.
Addressing a huge gathering at Akbarpur, Uttar Pradesh, on Friday, the BJP’s Prime Ministerial candidate said that the channel (Zee News) had reported that hundreds of hours of conversations intercepted and recorded by the I-T department showed the exporter (Moin Qureshi) talking to four cabinet ministers. Lots of skeletons have been uncovered, the BJP veteran said, and expressed the hope that the regime would answer his questions in this regard. “Shouldn’t the truth come out?” he asked the people, who responded with lusty cries in the affirmative.
Previously, at Etawah, UP, the Gujarat Chief Minister said that “the lion of Gujarat is roaring” and that the five phases of polling that are over have taken care of the defeat of the Congress and the UPA; that the Congress would not be able to open its account in many States; and it was now up to the youth to ensure a strong and stable Government in the remaining four phases.
First change the regime in Delhi, he exhorted the youth, and then “Lucknow also will have to be changed”. As the crowd chanted its agreement, he said, “Neta ji (Mulayam Singh), has a problem. His difficulty is that where he should be mulayam (soft) he becomes kathor (harsh) and where he should be kathor he becomes mulayam”. Where the honour of sisters and daughters is in danger, and the crime of rape takes place, he emphasised, Mulayam Singh should be harsh against the perpetrators, but he is soft.
Sharply attacking the Samajwadi Party chief, the BJP veteran said that there were communal riots in the area last year, and children were dying in the cold in relief camps. Here, he rubbed it in, “Netaji should have been soft; he should have shown karuna (kindness) to the children, but he could not do that”.
Targetting the UP Chief Minister, Narendra Modi said that the Chief Minister had asked for Gir lions and we gave them also, but he (Modi) would have been happier if the Chief Minister had asked for the Gir cow which the Yadu-vanshis had cared for from the time that Sri Krishna came to live in Dwarka. This could have benefitted the “Yadu bhai in UP who do animal husbandry; their lives would change”. The tragedy of UP, he said, is that “some people make elephant parks and some make lion safari, insaan ki chinta karne wali yehan sarkar nahin (there is no government to care for human beings). Bemoaning the plight of sugarcane farmers and the issue of minimum support price, he lamented the gun culture was spreading in UP because it has become the “paradise of criminals”, so much so that even those who struggle to make ends meet, feel the need for a gun licence. The people must strive for freedom from parivar-vad (family rule) in both Delhi and Lucknow.
At Betul (Madhya Pradesh), Narendra Modi applauded the strides taken by the district under the leadership of Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan and lamented the ruination of the country under ten years of UPA rule. “No one has seen such a corrupt and arrogant regime”, he said, adding that a recent book (The Accidental Prime Minister)has made it clear that Manmohan Singh was not ruling the country but that it was a “ma bete ki sarkar” which looted the country. Corruption, he intoned gravely, was in the character of the Congress and there is need to be cautious as the party is adept at changing colour to achieve its ends.
Both Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh have the second and third phases of polling on April 17 and 24; Uttar Pradesh has three more phases on April 30, and May 7 and 12.
Niticentral.com, 18 April 2014