Shah, Rahul lead race for Gujarat

NEW DELHI/ GANDHINAGAR: Setting the tone for an intense political battle in Gujarat, Leader of the Opposition in Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi on Saturday said that the Congress will defeat the BJP and Prime Minister Narendra Modi in the state. Mr Gandhi dared the BJP on a day when Union home minister Amit Shah was also present in Gujarat to participate in the "Sahkar se Samriddhi" programme.

Interacting with the party workers in Ahmedabad, Mr Gandhi said that the Congress will defeat the BJP in Gujarat in the next Assembly elections "just the way it defeated the saffron party in Ayodhya in the recent Lok Sabha polls".

Mr Gandhi said the Congress has been challenged and threatened by the BJP. He was addressing party workers days after the Congress and the BJP clashed outside the Gujarat Pradesh Congress Committee (GPCC) office when the BJP workers went there to protest against his (Mr Gandhi's) remarks on Hindus.

"They (the BJP) have challenged us by threatening and damaging our office. Let me tell you that we are together going to break their government like they damaged our office. Take it in writing that the Congress will contest in Gujarat and defeat Mr Modi and the BJP in Gujarat like we did in Ayodhya," he said.

"The Congress will win Gujarat, and from this state, it will make a new start," he said.

Mr Gandhi targeted Mr Modi over the BJP's defeat at the Faizabad Lok Sabha seat in Uttar Pradesh, where Ayodhya is located.

"By defeating the BJP in Ayodhya, the INDIA bloc has defeated the Ram Mandir movement that was launched by BJP veteran Lal Krishna Advani. What I am saying is something big... The Congress party and INDIA bloc defeated them in Ayodhya," Mr Gandhi said, adding that the Congress will defeat the BJP in Gujarat because the "balloon of Mr Modi's vision has burst".

"You could not have imagined that the BJP will get defeated in Ayodhya or that Mr Modi will win Varanasi by a small margin. They are going to be defeated here in Gujarat, like they were in Ayodhya. All you have to do is ask the people of Gujarat not to be scared," he said.

If the people of Gujarat fight without getting scared, the BJP will not be able to stand in front of them, he said.

"Mr Modi wanted to contest from Ayodhya, but his surveyors advised him against it, saying he will be defeated and his political career will end," he said, quoting the newly-elected SP MP from Faizabad Awadhesh Prasad.

Mr Gandhi said that the people of Ayodhya were angry with Mr Modi because he did not pay them compensation for their land, shops and houses.

On Saturday, the former Congress president also met the family members of those who lost their lives in various tragedies in Gujarat in recent years. He promised to raise their grievances in Parliament.

Relatives of the victims of the TRP game zone fire in Rajkot, a boat capsizing incident in Vadodara, the Morbi bridge collapse of 2022 and the 2016 Una Dalit flogging case met the Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha at the Gujarat Congress headquarters in Paldi area here.

Addressing the Sahkar se Samriddhi programme organised to mark the 102nd International Day of Cooperatives in Gandhinagar, Mr Shah, who is also the Union cooperation minister, declared that the policy on cooperation “will be out in a month's time".

The Union minister said the Centre has set a target to have a co-operative bank and a milk producers' union in each district of the country and also establish in the next five years multipurpose primary agriculture credit societies (PACS) in 2 lakh panchayats that have no cooperative institution.

The Centre will soon bring a national cooperative policy, he said, adding that 1,100 new farmer producer organisations have been formed in the country and more than 1 lakh PACS have accepted the new bylaws.

The National Cooperative Development Corporation will be able to work for the welfare of more cooperative institutions with the issuance of bonds worth '2,000 crores, Mr Shah said.

Mr Shah also thanked the Gujarat government for announcing a subsidy of 50 per cent on nano-urea and nano-DAP and said that their use will increase production and save the soil.

He also paid homage to BJP ideologue Syama Prasad Mookerjee on his 123rd birth anniversary and Jagjivan Ram on his death anniversary.

Later, Mr Shah visited a cooperative pilot project in Mahuliya village in Panchmahal district after distributing Rupay credit cards to women dairy farmers at 0 per cent interest at Changda village in Banaskantha.