Ahmedabad(IANS) : Electioneering in Gujarat hotted up Saturday with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) lambasting Congress president Sonia Gandhi for her use of “uncivil expressions” in dubbing Chief Minister Narendra Modi as “dishonest and a merchant of death”.
In a statement, BJP general secretary Arun Jaitley said: “We are pained at the choice of expressions and vocabulary of Sonia Gandhi. Since her speech was from a written text she is not entitled to benefit of doubt for poor understanding of Indian languages.”
He said Sonia Gandhi was the leader of the ruling United Progressive Alliance in New Delhi which was “soft on terror”. It was trying to save Afzal Guru, who faces death for masterminding the 2001 attack on the Indian Parliament, and also those responsible for the 2002 Godhra train fire incident.
“It is these terrorists who are the merchants of death. In hurling political abuses she seems bent on outdoing her general secretary B.K. Hariprasad,” said Jaitley.
He went on to say: “It does not befit the Congress president to call Modi dishonest. It was the Congress president who has gifted to India Ottavio Quattrochhi (Italian businessman accused in the Bofors payoff case).”
Jaitley said that despite the spate of terrorist attacks at different places in the country in the last three years, none of the perpetrators have been brought to book. “Let it not be forgotten that all terrorist attackers on Akshardham temple and Indian parliament (during BJP-led National Democratic Alliance rule) were either liquidated or convicted.”
He said in a democratic system it was expected of a responsible leader of a political party to observe decorum and restraint while dealing with political opposition. It was regrettable that Sonia Gandhi in her address to a tribal rally at Chikhli in south Gujarat forgot this elementary principle.
Asked whether the BJP would retaliate in the same vein, Jaitley said: “We will try our utmost to observe restraint in our campaign.”