launching a scathing attack on the Congress, the BJP’s prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi on Saturday said the party and its leader have been fooling the people of the country for years, only in order to retain power.
The Chief Minister of Gujarat said the Congress has frequently changed its names, symbols and policies but not its intentions. Training his guns on the party, he said their (leaders of Congress) approach is that they have “sovereign right over power” and hence they have become arrogant. Modi added that all of the Congress’ policies were only geared towards winning elections and not for the country’s development.
“The Congress thinks that God has created it to rule. They think they are born to rule and the people of the country are in our pocket. They present us (BJP) as anti-Muslims to garner their support. They even take my name and try to create fear among Muslims,” Modi said. The BJP leader further said all its policies are aimed at winning elections and not for the nation and neither for its future.
“If something has not changed in the Congress, it is its intentions. They believe and practice the politics of division while our (BJP) agenda and policies have always been to unite the nation and growth,” he said while addressing a rally in Dwarka on Saturday evening. This was his second big public appearance since the polls were announced in the national Capital. He had addressed a mammoth rally in Japanese Park in September.
Present on the occasion were the party’s chief ministerial candidate Harsh Vardhan, Delhi affairs in-charge and former party president Nitin Gadkari, MP from Amritsar Navjot Singh Sidhu, president of Delhi BJP unit Vijay Goel, former Delhi BJP president and New Delhi candidate Vijender Gupta and more than 12 candidates of Delhi Assembly elections. Modi also launched an attack on Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, accusing him of not uttering a single word despite the price rise that has hit the poor and common man.
“During Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s regime inflation was at 3.9 per cent. Now under an economist Prime Minister, it is more than 11 per cent. If prices continue to rise like this, what will the poor eatIJ The Prime Minister is not ready to take the blame for price rise,” he said.
The senior BJP leader also took on Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit for questioning Gujarat’s model of development. He added that she had been unable to provide drinking water to residents of the Capital even after 15 years of rule. Significantly, Modi initiated his address by touching upon the key issue of water scarcity in the Capital, which is especially relevant in this part of Delhi.
Rebutting the Delhi Government on its allegation of having no ‘model’ for the city, he said: “They say I have no model, but just look at Gujarat, I ensured that Madhya Pradesh shares Narmada water with us and made water available to 9,000 villages in my State. The Delhi Government, on the other hand, has spent some Rs 400-crores and is still struggling to get water from Haryana.” He boasted of completing the entire project in eight years and criticized Dikshit for being outrightly unsuccessful in solving Delhi’s water crisis in over 15 years of rule.
Accusing the State Government of repeated lapses in bringing the dying Yamuna back to life, BJP’s poster boy said: “Sparkling clean water flows through the Sabarmati now. I worked on the cleaning of the river by spending Rs 900-crore, whereas, Delhi has already spent a whopping Rs 3,900-crore on the Yamuna, even after which the river is nothing but a drain.”
He promised to install four water treatment plants and one barrage in the Capital to make it self-dependant, if voted to power. Modi also accused the Delhi Government of introducing BRT in the Capital in haste. “I had written a letter to the PM seeking implementation of BRT corridor in Gujarat. But he gave it to Delhi, which failed to implement it in the right way. After I took BRT corridors to six cities in Gujarat, it was not only successful but other countries too got inspired and copied our model,” Modi asserted.