Congress president Sonia Gandhi began her campaign in Gujarat on Wednesday. She kicked off her party’s publicity blitz in Saurashtra’s main city hours before the Election Commission announced that the region would poll in the first phase on December 13.
Sonia, who had raised a storm by calling chief minister Narendra Modi “maut ka saudagar” (merchant of death) ahead of the 2007 elections, did not directly target him and, instead, emphasised on the Congress’s contribution towards Gujarat’s growth story.
“Let’s make a new Gujarat,” she declared at the rally, organized in the heart of drought-affected Saurashtra region, where the BJP is already struggling with a combative former chief minister Keshubhai Patel’s aggressive campaign.
While Sonia tore into the Modi government’s record on issues like farmer suicides and high VAT on petroleum products, she did not respond to the CM’s attempt to provoke her ahead of the rally. Modi had alleged that the Union government had spent Rs 1,880 crore on her treatment abroad.
“Whenever we’ve taken steps in the interest of the nation, there’ve been all kinds of attacks on us. We’ve never bothered about such attacks earlier, and we never will. These people are not against corruption, they are just against us,” she said.
With senior colleagues by her side, Sonia drove down to Ramkrishna Ashram in Rajkot after landing at 10.40am in a symbolic gesture to blunt Modi’s poll campaign, which has revolved around the Ramkrishna’s famous disciple, Swami Vivekananda. She also visited Kaba Gandhi no Delo, associated with Karamchand Gandhi, the father of Mahatma Gandhi, en route to Race Course ground where she addressed the rally.
In a huge embarrassment to Narendra Modi, who has been raising questions on the expenditure on foreign travels of Sonia Gandhi, an RTI activist in Gujarat has accused the state government of not providing details on the travel bills of the CM and his ministers for the last five years.
Vadodara-based RTI activist Trupti Shah has sent a letter to Modi, saying information about his and his ministers’ travel-related expenses, mostly by helicopter, during ‘women empowerment sammelans’ had not been provided till date.
Shah said she had filed an RTI application on July 18, 2007. “The CM had organized sammelans in 27 places in Gujarat in 2007, just before the assembly polls. I have asked under RTI about expenses of this sammelan, ” she said, alleging that she was denied the information even after repeated reminders.
Congress president Sonia Gandhi did not seek any reimbursement of medical expenses from the government, the Central Information Commission had said in May, even as Gujarat CM Narendra Modi claimed Sonia spent Rs 1,880 crore on travel and medical expenses from the public exchequer.
During the hearing before CIC Satyananda Mishra in May, various ministries had held that no medical bills were submitted by Sonia for reimbursement. “From the submissions made by the respondents, it was quite clear that neither any reimbursement for such expenditure had been claimed by the individual concerned nor any expenditure made in this regard. Till now, the government has incurred no expenditure in this regard,” Mishra had held on May 3. He had said that in any case, the expenditure made by an individual on her treatment, in India or abroad, was private information and could not be subject matter of an RTI application.
The Election Commission announced a November-December poll schedule for Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh, setting the stage for a face-off between the Congress and the BJP that will have implications for the 2014 Lok Sabha contest.
HP will go to polls on November 4, while Gujarat will see a two-phase voting on December 13 and 17. The results in both states will be declared on December 20.
The BJP sees Gujarat as a sure shot, although not everyone in the party may be comfortable with the prospect of the boost it will impart to Modi’s claim to be the party’s choice for PM.
Narendra Modi has made no bones about his prime ministerial ambitions, repeatedly engaging with PM Manmohan Singh or Congress supremo Sonia Gandhi to position himself beyond the confines of the state. But many feel that a spike in his ambition may not sit well with party’s strategic imperative to hold on to existing allies and attract new ones before the Lok Sabha polls.
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