The news is bad for Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi as the December 11 date for the first round of Assembly elections nears.
AHMEDABAD: The news is bad for Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi as the December 11 date for the first round of Assembly elections nears. All the signs are that he has a real fight on his hands.
On Tuesday, Congress president Sonia Gandhi struck the right chord in addressing two large rallies at Idar, Sabarkantha, and at Gandhidham, Kutch.
She challenged Modi’s claim to being the champion of Narmada contending that it was meaningless as 65,000 km of canals required to bring water to these distant cotton and potato growing areas had been kept in abeyance. Modi compounded the neglect, she claimed, by providing four hours of power to an area that had been promised 18.
And, Shankarsinh Vaghela, also of the Congress, struck home deeper in a local dialect, highlighting the hypocrisy of the BJP. He pointed out that while Modi was abusing Musharraf, Advani was hugging him like a long lost relative.
The tragedy of Gujarat, both Sonia and Vaghela emphasized, was that a society that desperately needed computers was being offered trishuls by the BJP.
Modi already has cause for worry going by the poor attendance at his rallies at four places in Saurashtra – a BJP bastion, which is likely to fall thanks to the party dissidents.
To make this worse, sadhus from the influential Gadhada Swaminarayan sect are on a poll pilgrimage against Modi. They have been exhorting people to bring about a change.
Led by Lalji Nrugendraprasad, their entourage of hundreds of cars is moving all over southern Gujarat, claiming that Modi is bad for religion, as he incites religious divisions, introducing politics into sects, playing one Swami against the other, in order to control the temples. The yatra message is flowing swiftly through networks across the towns of Saurashtra.
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