From a park surrounded by houses with exposed brick walls, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday afternoon made a pitch for his development ‘mantra’ in his fourth and last election ‘jan sabha’ ahead of the Delhi Assembly polls.
Mr. Modi elaborated on a point mentioned by him several times this week – also one of the several commitments in the party’s vision document – of in-situ rehabilitation for JJ clusters. “My politics has only one style, only one mantra and only one focus and that is development. And it means that there should be change in the lives of poor people. Their children should get education, their parents should get medicine. And there should be concrete houses in place of jhuggis,” he said in an attempt to woo the residents of South Delhi’s Ambedkar Nagar.
For the second day in a row, the Prime Minister attacked his party’s main rival, the Aam Aadmi Party, currently embroiled in a controversy involving “dubious” donations and said he was asked by his friends whether he has also donated to the AAP. “When I got it checked, I was surprised to know that even Mahatma Gandhi and Obama have donated to them,” he said, inviting laughter from the crowd. “What kind of people are they (AAP)? In public life there should not be any place for such lies,” Mr. Modi said targeting AAP without naming it.
Ignoring that the AAP was being projected as ahead of the BJP in the race to capture power, Mr. Modi exuded confidence that his party will form the next government and Kiran Bedi will take oath as Chief Minister. He went on to trash opinion polls that have over the last few days predicted a majority for the AAP and appealed to people not to get swayed by these “lies” and said last time during last Assembly elections they claimed that they will win over 50 seats but could not even manage the highest tally.
“Even when I contested from Varanasi in Lok Sabha, they (surveys) said Modi will lose by three lakh votes. I don’t know who (pollsters) they are,” Mr. Modi said, adding that he was wondering how someone who could not win his own Lok Sabha seat was being projected as someone big, in an apparent reference to AAP chief Arvind Kejriwal.
