By IANS,
Surat/New Delhi : Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi Saturday urged Congress leader Rahul Gandhi to refrain from commenting on the state’s economic initiatives but the Congress retorted by terming Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) pro-corporate, saying it had little concern for the masses.
“Some people come from Delhi and give us advice on the Tata Nano project without full information,” Modi said in Surat.
He was reacting to Congress general secretary Rahul Gandhi’s criticism of the Gujarat government. Gandhi, while visiting Surat Feb 14, had said the Modi government had doled out special favours to Tata Motors for shifting its small car Nano project from West Bengal to Sanand.
In reply, the Congress said the basic problem with the BJP is its ideology which is pro-corporate and has nothing to do with the masses.
“It is the fault of the party ideology which supports the corporate world. It is extremely sad that in the land of Mahatma Gandhi, the corporate world is favoured who are earning crores of rupees,” Congress general secretary Digvijaya Singh said in New Delhi.
“The Modi government has nothing to do with medium and small scale industries,” he added.
However, the chief minister faulted the Congress-led central government for not doing enough for workers in the diamond polishing units, most of which in India are based in Surat, who have lost their jobs due to the global economic meltdown.
“When it is a question of providing alternative employment to recession-hit diamond workers the central government should refrain from playing politics. The state government is in contact with diamond traders of Canada so that the workers may get some work,” he said at a public meeting.
Modi accused the central government of “perpetrating injustice on the state”.
“The government in Delhi is openly anti-Gujarat. It is doing nothing but just throwing spanner in the works of developmental projects that the state government has undertaken,” he said.