Buoyed by feedback of swelling support for the BJP, side by side with the growing disarray in the Congress ranks amidst reports of president Sonia Gandhi’s indifferent health, vice president Rahul Gandhi failing to cut ice with voters, and Priyanka Vadra forced to defend her husband’s unprecedented wealth after her own multiple director identification numbers (DINs) came to light which suggests her association with unknown firms, a visibly relaxed Narendra Modi sought cent per cent voting from Gujarat in favour of the BJP. The State goes to the polls on April 30.
Speaking in Gujarati to enthusiastic crowds at Surendranagar in Saurashtra region and Kalol (Gandhinagar) on Wednesday morning, the BJP’s Prime Ministerial contender said that the regime in Delhi has always been hostile to Gujarat, as a result of which the State could not put gates on the Narmada dam for the past seven years. This has adversely affected electricity generation and availability of water for irrigation and other purposes, and impeded the overall development of Saurashtra. “We Gujaratis are good in mathematics,” he joked, adding that having one’s own government at the Centre would be tantamount to having “all five fingers in ghee” (hitting the jackpot).
The unjustified ban on cotton exports was like sprinkling chili powder on the wounds of farmers, he reminded the gathering, pointing out that Gujarat farmers alone lost income to the tune of Rs 7000 crore as a result of this decision. Emphasising the pro-farmer attitude of the BJP, he said the party manifesto had fine-tuned a formula for fixing the minimum support price for agricultural produce on the basis of actual input costs plus farmers’ profit, and the days of arbitrary price fixation by officials or traders in the mandi were over. The conditions in which farmers committed suicide in many places in the country would no longer be allowed to prevail, he pledged.
Former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, he said, conceived the Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana under which villages in the remotest parts of the country were linked up with the main roads of the respective States; this immensely empowered the people. The new government would similarly create the Pradhan Mantri Krushi Sinchai Yojana on the same lines and create an irrigation network all over country, on priority basis, he promised.
Atal ji, he said, had the vision to conceive the interlinking of rivers to save people from floods while providing water to farmers in drought prone areas, but this was scuttled by the Congress-UPA regime. Now the Supreme Court has chastised the Government (yo dando maro che), he chuckled as the crowd roared in approval, and has asked for an explanation about the works it has executed (or not) in this regarded. The NDA, he pledged, would revive the plan to link rivers.
The Congress, he warned, is an expert at cheating (thagai, dhoka) the people and after doing nothing for ten years, it is promising to create 10 crore jobs if re-elected. But the truth, the Gujarat veteran said, is that in the last 10 years the UPA created only 1.25 crore jobs as against a record 6.5 crore created by Atal ji in just six years. The party leaders are going across the country and addressing the people, he said, but they are not answering any pertinent questions about any issue.
At Kalol, where he asked the people to support former BJP president LK Advani as one of the early exponents of ‘vikas’ as the key to good governance, Narendra Modi was so relaxed that he even accepted peoples’ request to change the position of the podium on the dais before continuing his speech. The former deputy Prime Minister was represented by his son Jayant Advani.
“Gujarat has decided,” he affirmed, “we are winning, but I want your vote”. Insisting that “I want the vote of every person in Gujarat”, he said the Congress should not be allowed to open its account in the State, that the BJP should win all 26 seats, and that Gujarat’s voting percentage should be the highest in the country. “I urge you all to break all previous records and vote in large numbers on polling day”, he added, pointing out that Gujarat was getting an opportunity to fulfill the dreams of Sardar Patel. This allusion to Sardar Patel losing the chance to be the first Prime Minister of independent India, always a sore point in the Gujarati psyche, was not lost on the people.
Later in the evening at Himmatnagar, Sabarkantha, wearing colourful head gear and laughing and joking with an ecstatic crowd shouting for a ‘Modi sarkar’, the BJP veteran reminisced how he once moved around the State on a bicycle, lived a life of poverty selling tea, and today this son of a soil (dikra) is challenging a powerful dynasty. In this election, he said, it is not political parties or individuals who are fighting, but the people who are fighting for the realisation of their dreams, aspirations and future.
Recalling his recent tours in Maharashtra, Telangana and other places, he said the people showered unstinted love upon him. Today, he said, the country is in distress and the situation is extremely bad outside Gujarat, there are 400 districts in distress for drinking water even 60 years after freedom. Reminding the people how he had stood up to the challenge of the Bhuj earthquake and begun showing results in just nine months, infusing the whole State with confidence, he exhorted them to give him the strength to fulfill the aspirations aroused in the whole country.
Saying he had no personal ambitions, Narendra Modi said that when the BJP made him its Prime Ministerial candidate, “you know my nature, I throw myself into task given”. The Congress is running scared and each time a serious issue is raised, such as employment for youth, the safety of sisters, or water for farmers, the ma beta sarkar shout ‘what about secularism’. Today the Congress has only one agenda – ‘Stop Modi’. “I wonder how this party (Congress) won elections for so many years”, he joked. To loud cheering, the BJP veteran said that the 2014 election offers Gujarat an opportunity to send a son of the soil to Delhi to preside over the destiny of India. The people should step up, he exhorted, and every single voter should cast his vote to ensure a 300-plus strong government that can deliver on its promises and the expectations roused in the nation.
Niticentral.com, 23 April 2014
http://www.niticentral.com/2014/04/23/congress-regime-hates-gujarat-narendra-modi-215466.html