‘Congress wipeout in Gujarat assembly polls imminent’

Rajkot/Surendranagar/Amod: Fresh from the landslide in Uttar Pradesh civic body polls, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday predicted a massive drubbing for the Congress in state assembly polls saying that the party has only engineered social and religious divide for its electoral gains in the last 70 years.

“Congress has suffered a big defeat in Uttar Pradesh, which is the ‘karm bhoomi’ of all top Congress leaders, right from former PM Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru who ruled the state for decades. There is a massive BJP wave everywhere, which will wipe out the Congress from the state,” he said in Amod near Bharuch.

“Gujarat people have understood Congress’ gimmicks very well. They only know how to create a rift between two brothers, rich and poor, educated and illiterate and city and villagers. They only know how to engineer religious and caste divide, all this just to their advantage. You will keep fighting and dying and Congress will take the advantage,” the PM said.

In Rajkot, Modi flayed the Congress for being dismissive about recent improvement in ‘Ease of Doing Business’ ranking and Moody’s rating and said, “Congress said these You were completely routed in Uttar Pradesh. I don’t think the record of defeats set by the Congress will ever be broken.”

Addressing a public rally in Rajkot, Modi said that the Congress should introspect the reasons for the party leaders setting new records of electoral defeats and why the acceptability of this grand old party has touched a new low. “Congress has become synonymous with corruption, dynastic rule, vote bank politics and casteism. They have no one else but themselves to blame for being in tatters.”

Taking a dig at the Harvard-educated former Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh and finance minister P Chidambaram, Modi said, “It is the hard work that pays and not Harvard.”

Referring to senior Congress leader Ahmed Patel’s Rajya Sabha election held in July, Modi said in Surendranagar that for the next five years, Congress should be sent packing to the Bengaluru resort, where the party MLAs were enjoying instead of helping distressed people in Banaskantha and Chotila that were ravaged by floods.

“Gujarat government was engaged in serving Surendranagar people. But what were Congress leaders doing? Only to ensure victory of one person in Rajya Sabha, all MLAs went away to a resort in Bangalore. Banaskantha was flooded but they were still enjoying in resort. I feel we should help the Congress by helping them go to the resort and stay there for the next five years.”

In Surendranagar, he recalled the ‘Gujarat gadheda (donkey) jibes and said that he had no qualms in beingcompared to a donkey. “A donkey is loyal to his master. The 125 crore people of the country are my masters.”