By IANS
Ahmedabad : Accusing the Congress of targeting Chief Minister Narendra Modi only to shore up its “secular credentials”, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) Monday said the assembly election this week was about the pride of Gujarat.
“In the name of Narendra Modi-bashing, the Congress is indulging in Gujarat-bashing. This is being done to shore up its secular credentials outside Gujarat. It is a part of their larger design of vote bank politics,” BJP spokesperson Prakash Javadekar said here.
Asking the BJP supporters to come out in large numbers to vote for the party candidates, he said, “The Gujarat election is not just another election. The international community is watching it with curiosity. It is not only a political fight between the Congress and BJP but is about Gujarat’s pride.”
The Congress, hoping to regain power in the state after more than a decade, has been questioning the claims of the Modi government on the development front in its poll campaign.
While Congress president Sonia Gandhi told an election rally last week that “merchants of death” were having a free run in the state, party general secretary Digvijay Singh had spoken of “Hindu terrorism” in criticising the Modi government.
Meanwhile, rebel BJP leader Gordhan Zadaphia, who is now campaigning against the party, said: “The BJP’s development plank has failed as development does not come about by making tall claims in five-star hotels of Delhi. It comes about when the issues of the farmers and the poor are addressed.”
He said the BJP was set for a debacle in Saurashtra and south Gujarat that go to polls in the first round of Tuesday.
Zadaphia, a former minister of state for home in the Modi government, has held 49 public meetings in Saurashtra to “awaken the farmers”.
“The BJP in Gujarat is not the BJP of Shyama Prasad Mukherjee or Pandit Deen Dayal Upadhyay. It is the BJP of Modi and we are opposed to it,” he said.