By IANS,
Ahmedabad: Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi Sunday accused the Congress-led central government of conspiring to dislodge his government and demanded the recall of Governor Kamla Beniwal.
“The Congress is trying to run a parallel government in the state through the Raj Bhavan,” Modi alleged at a rally organised to demand the recall of the governor.
He said Beniwal had transgressed the thin line and brought the office of the governor to disrepute by virtually turning it into a Congress Bhavan.
The rally, which comes within a week of the three-day fast held as part of his sadbhavana (goodwill) mission, virtually marked the beginning of the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) election campaign though the state assembly polls are almost a year away.
However, the rally remained a state-level show as no national BJP leader attended it.
Veteran party leader L.K. Advani, who is the Lok Sabha member from Gandhinagar, was conspicuous by his absence as for almost two decades he has regularly come to Gujarat on this day to pay a visit to Somnath as it is the anniversary of his rath yatra.
Modi mounted an all-out attack on the central government and said it was treating Gujarat as if it was an enemy and leaving no stone unturned to impede the development of the state.
“Though the population has grown by almost 20 percent, the fertiliser quota of the state has been reduced to one-third. This is a deliberate attempt to starve the farmers of agri-inputs and create a crisis of sorts in the state,” he said.
“Similar is the state of kerosene supplies,” he added.
Modi said the previous governor, Nawal Kishore Sharma, was a veteran politician with a legal background and therefore understood the intricacies of issues at stake and did not allow the Raj Bhavan to be misused.
“However, the present occupant of the Raj Bhavan in Gandhinagar has shown no such compunctions. How can you run a parallel government using the governor’s office? Sentences used in Congress memorandums find their way into official communications eminating from Raj Bhavan,” he added.
Modi pointed out that there were nine bills awaiting the governor’s approval and she was interfering in the functioning of even universities and appointments therein.
He warned fellow chief ministers of non-Congress ruled states to be alive to this threat as this was a scenario affecting all of them.