BJP’s prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi pledged to cleanse politics and Parliament, at an election rally in Hardoi on Monday.
“I have decided that when a new government is formed after May 16, I will set up a committee to find out what cases are pending against whom. I will not discriminate in it. I will not spare even those from the BJP or the NDA.”
“I will ask the Supreme Court to hear the cases fast. Those who have committed crime, will go to jail and their seats will go to candidates with clean image. No accused will dare to fight polls. Who says that this cleansing cannot happen? I have come to cleanse politics. It is necessary to free Indian democracy from criminalisation,” he said.
Later in the day, Mr. Modi addressed a rally at Mathura. While several independent observers conceded that the town has not witnessed such a massive gathering in recent years, it did not go unnoticed that the BJP did not figure even once in his characteristic 25-minute speech. References to the BSP, which has a good support base, were in the passing with Mr. Modi focusing entirely on the Congress and the SP.
At Mathura, he said the only goal of parties like the SP and the Congress in the current election was to stop him from becoming the PM as they knew where they would end up once it happens.
He lamented that the Yamuna had become a drain. “Come to Gujarat and see how we have cleaned Sabarmati river. I ask the Google gurus here to log on to the net and look at the transformation of the river in the course of a decade.”
He portrayed himself as a member of a poor family who has seen his mother cry when there was no firewood for cooking while ridiculing Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi for visiting homes of the poor like a tourist visiting the Taj Mahal.
Flaying both the Congress and the SP for playing politics of dynasty and nepotism, the BJP leader was cutting in his comment on Congress president Sonia Gandhi’s son-in-law Robert Vadra.
“For them all that matters is dynasty and nepotism. And now even the extended family is being covered. They are not ready to recognise the power of the community beyond their family members.
