Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi on Thursday likened the Bharatiya Janata Party’s campaign theme of “Gujarat model of development” to its “India Shining” campaign that failed in 2004.
He said the BJP’s prime ministerial candidate, Narendra Modi, stopped talking about the “Gujarat model” after its “hollowness” was exposed.
At an election meeting in Gopalganj, Mr. Gandhi said that in 2004, the BJP claimed India was shining when farmers were dying. “There were no jobs for labourers and no power and water for the people across the country. The Gujarat model similarly was lopsided, benefiting a couple of big people,” he said and called it “Adani model.”
“Mr. Modi gifted 45,000 acres of land to the Adani Group for a paltry sum and left the farmers in the lurch by diverting the power meant for them to the Adani group.”
He said Mr. Modi had not cared to construct roads and railway lines or provide water and power. He had doled out about Rs. 30,000 crore to just “one person,” while ignoring the basic needs of the people.
“The Congress had spent the same sum, Rs. 30,000 crore, in giving jobs to crores of people under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme,” Mr. Gandhi said. The party planned to set up industrial corridors between Delhi and Mumbai, Mumbai and Bangalore, Bangalore and Chennai and Delhi and Kolkata.
“Industrial hubs will be set up with Japanese aid, and in five years’ time, the U.S. President [Barack Obama], who fears China first and India second, will be wearing a watch made in Gopalganj and not the one made in China that he sports now,” Mr. Gandhi said.
