Congress President-designate Rahul Gandhi on Tuesday said that the Bharatiya Janata Party was running a negative campaign for the Gujarat Assembly elections, and had shifted the focus to its opponents.
He said that the party had taken strong action against Mani Shankar Aiyar for his “neech” remarks about Prime Minister Narendra Modi, but said that Modi’s comments about former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh were also unacceptable.
Modi had claimed that Aiyar had held a secret meeting with Pakistani officials which Manmohan Singh also attended. The former prime minister on Monday accused Modi of spreading falsehoods to “score political points”.
Gandhi said that he was surprised that the Bharatiya Janata Party was not giving his party a tougher fight. “People of Gujarat are very intelligent, they can see that PM Modi is not talking about corruption or farmers in his rallies,” Gandhi said. “There is a massive undercurrent.”
The Congress leader reiterated his claim that in the past 22 years the BJP government’s initiatives had benefited only five to 10 people. “Not everyone has been given their rights,” he said.
The opposition party, Gandhi said, was confident of winning the Gujarat Assembly elections and said that polls are “won on narrative”, The Hindu reported. “Those who do not change their narrative win the polls. If you see, BJP in Gujarat kept changing narrative but failed.”
The Congress leader dismissed the ruling party’s claim that he was visiting temples only before the Gujarat elections. “It is the BJP’s story that I visited temples in Gujarat only,” Gandhi said. “But in fact, I visited Kedarnath temple. Is that in Gujarat? It is in Uttarakhand.”
Earlier in the day, Gandhi criticised the prime minister for the plight of Dalits in Gujarat.
As part of his campaign for the Gujarat Assembly elections, he has posed a question to the BJP government in the state every day for the past 14 days on Twitter. On Tuesday, he said Dalits in Gujarat have only faced insecurities and have no land, employment, healthcare or education facilities.
“Modi is still quiet on the Una incident, who will answer the question?” Gandhi said in a tweet. “Plenty of laws have been framed for Dalits, but when will they be implemented?”
In July 2016, a mob of self-appointed “cow protection” vigilantes in Gujarat had stripped, tied and beat up four Dalit men for skinning a dead cow in Gir Somnath district’s Una taluka. The incident had triggered perhaps the biggest Dalit protest movement in Gujarat in recent history. In the weeks following the attack, amid national outrage, 40 men accused of the crime were arrested.
Tuesday is the last day of campaigning for the second phase of the Gujarat Assembly elections. The first phase of voting was held on Saturday with a voter turnout of 68% in 89 constituencies. The remaining 93 constituencies will vote on Thursday. The results will be declared on December 18.
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