In the City of Joy on Tuesday Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi tended to pick up from where he left in Delhi slamming the Centre and slamming rather hard on its poor governance and discriminatory politics in the process buttressing the allegations levelled by his Bengal counterpart Mamata Banerjee against the UPA-II.
Alleging that the Centre was pushing the country towards a tumultuous future the Gujarat Chief Minister said the dispensation in the Capital had entered into a comatose state whence “the development related files take years to move as most of those at the helm are afraid to open them” lest the scam genie leapt out of the papers.
“During the era of Atal Bihari Vajpayee there was optimism in the air but that feeling has completely vanished now and a sense of despondency has gripped the nation,” he said wondering whether a rickety Government “that has reached its twilight hours and constantly looking at the watch” expecting a calamity to happen any moment had any ability to govern.
Attacking Prime Minister Manmohan Singh for failing to convert sensible advises into action (handling inflation being one of them) Modi said, “The only thing this Government is capable of doing is playing discriminatory politics.”
Modi was addressing an 800-plus congregation of industry magnets in Kolkata where he had come to make his development pitch and explain the ways that could take the nation to a higher trajectory of inclusive growth and social equality a la Gujarat which had been “transformed into a revenue-surplus State with no taxes imposed in the past 12 years.”
Condemning the Centre for its partisan governance, the Chief Minister literally backed the claim of his Bengal counterpart saying “the rules are different for the States which are ruled by the UPA and the ones ruled by others” reminding “when Vajpayeeji was in power even the left Government of Bengal never complained of differential treatment though ideologically the BJP and the left stand poles apart.”
The Centre was systematically damaging the federal structure of the nation he said. “A time has come when the States should remind the Centre that they had not right to discriminate” he said ruing how the partisan ways of the Centre came in the way of aspirations of the States.
Curiously Modi’s statement tended to come within a day of Banerjee condemning the Centre for “economically blockading Bengal.” She made these statement hours before she took a flight to Delhi on Monday.
In what was also viewed as a politically significant stance the Gujarat Chief Minister aimed at Banerjee’s arch enemy the Marxists for devastating the State for the past three decades. “It took me several years to repair the pits that were dug by our predecessors (Congress) in Gujarat in the preceding 10 years of my coming to power. Here in Bengal it is bound to take longer period to fill the pits dug by the previous dispensation for the preceding 34 years of their rule,” he said literally hailing Banerjee for “all the good works being done to give your State a healthy administration.”
Taking a dig at the Centre for its feeble foreign policy, the visiting Chief Minister reminded how India had miserably failed to even lead and evoke respect among the smaller nations around it.
“We have failed to respond to the grave situation in Bangladesh, a nation that sprung into existence with the help of India,” he said adding how “the Government also failed to take appropriate measures when others (Pakistani intruders) entered our territory and cut away the head of our Army jawans.”
Taking a dig at Foreign Minister SM Krishna for his faulty handling of the Italian marines case, Modi said how “two Italians accused of killing our men were allowed to go to their home to take part in elections whereas in our own country we do not leave convicts even to take part in their mothers’ funerals.”