New Delhi: BJP chief Amit Shah attacked Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi for questioning development in poll-bound Gujarat and asked him to wear Gujarati glasses and not the ones made in Italy, if he wants to see development.
The BJP national president is campaigning in Gujarat after the Congress vice-president recently visited the state’s Saurashtra region.
“The Congress is asking us what the Narendra Modi government at the Centre has given Gujarat in these three years. I want to remind them that the Modi government approved AIIMS for Gujarat, an international airport for Rajkot, approved raising the height of the Narmada dam and allocated homes to six lakh urban poor,” Mr Shah said on Monday at a gathering in Porbandar during the launch of the second phase of his “Gujarat Gaurav Yatra” that was kicked off on Sunday from Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel’s birthplace Karamsad.
“However, Rahul could not see any of this. He still asks what we have done in these three years. Rahul can’t see it because he is wearing Italian glasses. To be able to see the development, he needs to remove those spectacles and wear Gujarati glasses,” Mr Shah added.
Taking a dig at Mr Gandhi, Mr Shah accused the Congress of “inflicting” injustice on Gujarat, generation after generation.
“Those who mock the Gujarat development model will be made fun of by the people of Gujarat,” Mr Shah said, claiming that elections in the state will be held in the first week of December.
The Congress V-P is expected to make three more short visits to Gujarat before the election dates are officially announced.
The Congress, that is going all out to encash anti-incumbency sentiment in the BJP-ruled state, plans to use all-women campaign teams. Newly-appointed Mahila Congress chief Sushmita Dev, a Lok Sabha MP from Silchar in Assam, is in Gujarat to oversee the women-centric campaign.
The Congress had got a shot in the arm earlier this year when Ahmed Patel, political secretary to party president Sonia Gandhi, had won a fiercely contested Rajya Sabha election. But the election also exposed fissures within the Gujarat Congress with the former chief minister Shankersinh Vaghela quitting the party. Mr Vaghela has now floated a new political front.
