As Priyanka Gandhi raked up the Snoopgate issue against NDA’s prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi, BJP on Thursday hit back saying that her remarks suggested that there should be no personal attacks meant that Gandhis are entitled to “stoop to any level” but others cannot target them.
“Sound bites for convenience rather than out of conviction seem to be Gandhi-Vadra strategy. I thought that Mrs Vadra made a good point when she suggested that no personal attacks should be made. In the very next breath, she raked up ‘snoopgate’. What she probably meant that no personal attacks against the Gandhis but the Gandhis are entitled to stoop to any level,” said SAD-BJP coalition candidate from Amritsar Arun Jaitley.
Jaitley, the leader of Opposition in the Rajya Sabha, said that he was not in the holy city for conventional political activity but one which was more issue oriented and less personality oriented. “I am not here for conventional political activity. I am here to make a difference...Amritsar requires a different kind of politics. It should be increasingly become more issue-oriented and less personality oriented. It is only then that the people here can collectively make a difference,” he said.
Jaitley also shared his vision for Amritsar, which was a clean city with broad roads, flyovers, elevated bus corridor, proper sewage and drainage system, public transport system, educational institutions and one with modern industries at the outskirts and buzzing with trade.
“I visualise a drug-free Amritsar where drug smuggling across the border is handled as strictly as the terrorist infiltration. I visualise Amritsar as safe city where there is zero tolerance for crimes against women,” he wrote in his campaign dairy. He said that he visualised it as a primary tourism circuit where tourism infrastructure like restaurants, guest houses, hotels, dhabas are extensive, besides a world class sports complex, an amusement park, a walking bazaar where handicrafts are sold and a food street where people arrive from all over to enjoy the delicacies of Punjab.
‘Vision’ full of contradiction
Former chief minister Capt Amarinder Singh on Thursday questioned his SAD-BJP rival Arun Jaitley’s “blurred vision” of Amritsar inherent with so many contradictions. “With Bikram Majithia, who is openly patronising drugs and criminals, being his man and campaign manager, how can Jaitley visualise of a drug free and crime free AmritsarIJ” he asked. Congress candidate, referring to Jaitley’s vision for “a drug free Amritsar where the drug smuggling across the border is handled as strictly as the terrorist infiltration”, told him that real threat was not drugs from across the border as most of these are seized by the BSF and the police. “The real problem is homemade synthetic drugs under the patronage of Majithia, who has already been named in the case related to international drug racket and is likely to be prosecuted soon,” he added. On Jaitley’s Amritsar’s development vision, Capt Amarinder asked him to refer to his Amritsar City Development Project “which I had got prepared in 2006 for 20 years of Amritsar’s development...You better ask Navjot Sidhu how much he was allowed to develop Amritsar.”
Jaitley retorts Capt on website remark
Maintaining that his Congress rival Capt Amarinder Singh is “increasingly becoming desperate” by claiming that he has become “inaccessible” as his website is closed, SAD-BJP nominee Arun Jaitley made it clear that his website “has only been temporarily hacked...I am still available on Facebook and Twitter.”
Responding to allegations that senior Supreme Court lawyer and Jaitley’s close aide Mukul Rohatgi had appeared in 1984 riot case against
victims, Jaitley said that after checking up with Mukul, “he told me that as an independent lawyer, in the recent past, he has appeared for Mulayam
Singh Yadav, Mayawati, Chidambaram, Narendra Modi, Amit Shah, the Badals and even Captain Sahib’s family members… Since when have I become responsible for actions of Mukul’s clientsIJ”
‘Temporarily hacked’
Asking BJP stalwart Arun Jaitley to clarify what does “temporarily hacked” mean, Capt Amarinder Singh said: “We have heard of server going down or website going down temporarily but never heard a website being hacked temporarily.”
“It is for the first time that somebody is saying that his website has been hacked temporarily,” he said, while adding “Probably the hacker might have told him that he is hacking it temporarily and will release it once elections are over.” Capt Amarinder added, “Jaitley’s website says a different story, saying, ‘we have stepped out for a while and will be back soon’, may be with hacker’s permission.”