By IANS
Ahmedabad : The Congress Monday said “winds of change” were blowing across Gujarat even as it said its first list of candidates for the next month’s assembly polls will be released Thursday.
Addressing a press meet, Gujarat Congress president Bharat Solanki and central minister Kapil Sibal, who is in charge of media for Gujarat, said they could discern a “wind of change blowing across Gujarat with people yearning for a new dispensation”.
Describing Chief Minister Narendra Modi’s rule as one-man show conducted by an event manager, they said they were confident that the electorate will vote Modi out and end “six years of misrule in Gujarat”.
The change will put Gujarat back on the path of development through entrepreneurship, an attribute for which people of Gujarat are known all over the world, the two leaders said.
The verdict for change will also be against “fear and infrastructure of terror” that has been built by the Gujarat chief minister, they added.
Solanki said the first list of the party’s candidates would be announced Thursday.
Asked if it will reflect any seat-sharing adjustment with the allies like the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP), he said: “The process of consultations on seat-sharing is on with the UPA (United Progressive Alliance) allies.” He, however, did not elaborate.
Sibal said the party, if voted to power, would focus on rejuvenating education in the state, a sector that has been “woefully neglected”. The Congress would also focus on development of bio- and nano-technologies in the state besides giving a fillip to IT, three key sectors for future progress.
He also criticised the government on the education front, quoting figures on the basis of approved projects of the All India Council of Technical Education.
“If education is neglected what sort of future Gujarati youth have?” Sibal asked and said: “Modi was paying all attention to industrialists and not to educating the youth of the state.”
Leader of Opposition in the state assembly Arjun Modhvadia said Gujarat under the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) rule had become a lawless state with an increasing crime rate.
There was an atmosphere of violence and civil society was on the verge of collapse, he said, adding that crimes like kidnapping had become a routine affair.