The Gujarat government has been organising “Garib Kalyan Mela” (conventions for the welfare of the poor) at various district and taluka towns where Chief Minister Narendra Modi personally distributed government aid to the poor.
At almost every meeting, he has been attacking the Congress-led government at the Centre for its failure to contain the surging prices of essentials, but on Thursday, for the first time he had a dig at UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi, at a convention at Patan in north Gujarat.
He said he had written several letters to the Centre urging it to check prices as it was nullifying the measures taken by the State governments for the poor. He said the letters were in languages he thought the people in the government at the Centre understood, but no one seemed to be interested in controlling price rise. “Now I think I will have to write a letter in Italian and see if anyone takes notice of it,” he said, apparently hinting at Ms. Gandhi’s Italian background.
Slams Congress
He also slammed the Congress which had been criticising him for holding such conventions at huge public expense. Quoting the former Prime Minister, Rajiv Gandhi’s famous remark that a rupee released from the Centre for aid becomes only 10 paise when it reached the actual beneficiary, Mr. Modi said such conventions ensured that the “whole rupee” reached him. “I am sitting here like a watchman to ensure that not a paise is misappropriated from the amount sanctioned to you,” he told the beneficiaries.
Irked by his personal attack on Ms. Gandhi, the Leader of the Opposition in the Assembly, Shaktisinh Gohil, said there was no space for such personal statements in a democracy.
