By Rafat Nayeem Quadri, for TCN,
Ahmedabad: “Countdown for Modi’s government has started from today” announced Narendra Modi’s old mate and now chairman of the Congress Campaign Committee, Shankersinh Waghela.
This and many more such strong statements were hurled at Modi directly by the Congress leaders including three Union Ministers and all top leaders of Gujarat Congress sans Shaktisinh Gohil who has been suspended from the Gujarat Assembly over his comment on Modi’s favouritism to a business house.
Congress workers in hundreds were protesting their leader’s suspension from Assembly which they called was ‘unconstitutional and undemocratic’. All the leaders first went to the Ashram to pay homage to Gandhiji and shouted slogans like “Hitlershahi nahi chalegi” “hai re Modi hai hai” and many more. Later they walked down to the adjacent ground where they addressed a large gathering of Congress workers. A large number of media persons were also present there.
Police thwarted the attempt of Congress workers who after attending the meeting tried to take out the march under the banner of ‘Save Democracy’ to Gandhinagar, against the policies of the ruling BJP government. Among the leaders who were detained included Gujarat Congress in-charge Mohan Prakash, state unit party chief Arjun Modhvadia, campaign committee chief Shankarsinh Vaghela, Union ministers Dinsha Patel, Tushar Chaudhary, Bharatsinh Solanki and the office-bearers namely Narhari Amin and Siddarth Patel, besides hundreds of party workers.
Throwing an open challenge to Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi whom he called ‘the most cowardice and weak Chief Minister Gujarat ever had’, Gujarat State Congress President Arujun Modhwadia said: “Modi is always surrounded by commandoes, reads the readymade speeches, if he has guts he must attend a debate and answer the questions and explanations put forth by us. But he is cowardice, he can’t face it.”
Modhvaidya further said: “This is first of its kind of move to suspend the leader of opposition from the Assembly in India. We Congressmen never believe in violence and have been following Gandhiji’s values and model of non-violence or else we could have also retaliated and vandalised like them when they protested during Congress governance and uprooted 100 year old trees and did vandalism”.
Modhvadiya said “if Modi is clean and has no fear why is he spending lakhs and crores of public money engaging top notch lawyers to delay the Lokayukta appointment? What is there to hide” asked Modhvadiya.
“Several got brutally killed and 5000 people were jailed following Godhra and the irresponsible Modi spoke different language and asked the police to allow Hindus to vent their anger. But, today he says law will take action. He has no courage to support the people whom he used. We at Congress back our people” Modhvadiya said.
Mohan Prakash also gave a call to his party men to not stop at this and take the message of what Shaktisinh was not allowed to deliver in the Assembly to every nook and corner of Gujarat and continue with “Hisaab do Jawaab do” campaign.
Modhvadiya later gave details of how the Modi government favoured five industrialists (whom he called as five BPL ‘below poverty line’ industrialists) and gave away Gujarat land at throwaway prices.
Congress leaders said the ruling government tried to use police to stop Congress men from coming to the protest rally. Thus, only 30 percent of them could attend the public meeting’ lamented Waghela.
Earlier the Congress leaders stated that the idea to protest on 12th March against Modi and his governance was to coincide with the historic Dandi March which was initiated by Mahatma Gandhi with handful of people, from this very Ashram and had resulted into the ouster of British Raj.
Congress has planned a series of protests and campaign to ‘expose Modi and his scams’ in the days to come in entire Gujarat. Meanwhile, in a simple yet unique attempt Gujarat Congress office bearer Manish Doshi has written a letter to Modi, on the lines of him writing to the Prime Minister asking some regional questions and explanations regarding transport services and other inefficiencies of the State Government.