UNION Home Minister Amit Shah on Sunday asserted that the ongoing Lok Sabha polls were a choice between Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who celebrates Diwali among Armymen, and Congress leader Rahul Gandhi who “rushes abroad for vacations whenever the weather becomes uncomfortable”. Addressing back-to-back election rallies in Karakat and Sasaram Lok Sabha constituencies in Bihar, Shah dubbed the I.N.D.I.A. bloc as the one comprising “scamsters guilty of financial wrongdoings worth Rs 12 lakh crore” which was taking on Modi, “with an unblemished record during the 23 years he was CM (of Gujarat) and the PM”. He said that unlike Gandhi, who was “born with a silver spoon”, Modi has worked hard to reach the top, coming from an “ati pichhda (extremely backward class) family” and selling tea at one point of time to make ends meet.

 

The former BJP President claimed that the I.N.D.I.A. bloc lacked a cohesive leadership and “its prominent figures are looking at one year of Prime Ministership each. Such an arrangement can never provide a strong government capable of defeating Pakistan-sponsored terrorism”. The Home Minister slammed the Congress for being “scared of Pakistan’s atomic bombs” and asserted that his Government, which has scrapped Article 370 in Jammu and Kashmir, was resolved to claim Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir “which was ours, is ours and shall remain ours”. Shah lambasted parties opposed to the BJP for providing reservations, in States ruled by them, “to Muslims, cutting into the share of SCs, STs and OBCs” and asserted that PM Modi has resolved to put an end to this. He charged the Opposition parties with having been opposed to the construction of the Ram temple in Ayodhya which finally took place with Modi at the helm. In Sasaram, which is a reserved constituency, Shah spoke of budgetary allocation for Dalits’ welfare rising to Rs 1.65 lakh crore under the Modi Government, compared to Rs 41,000 crore during the previous UPA regime.

 

He also underscored that the PM gave due respect to Babasaheb Ambedkar by organising celebrations in his memory and turning into ‘teerth sthal’ (pilgrimage spots) all the places linked to him. He criticised the RJD, the BJP’s principal opponent in Bihar, for “tying up with anti-OBC Congress, which sat on Kaka Kalelkar report and opposed implementation of Mandal Commission recommendations”. In Karakat, where NDA partner Upendra Kushwaha has CPI(ML) Liberation as one of the main challengers, Shah reminded the people of the Naxal violence, which used to keep Bihar in the headlines a few decades back, and warned that a victory for the Left party could lead to a fresh spurt in similar incidents. Widely regarded as the BJP’s principal strategist, he claimed that the NDA had “notched up 310 seats in the first five phases” of the elections, and in the last two legs, it was on course to achieve the target of 400-plus. “In the third term, we will make India the third largest economy of the world,” he asserted.