Nandan Nilekani's Aadhaar project a political gimmick with no vision: Narendra Modi

BANGALORE: BJP prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi on Tuesday subjected Infosys co-founder Nandan Nilekani to a prolonged attack over the unique identity card, Aadhaar, to boost the prospects of his party colleague Ananth Kumar facing an uphill task to retain his Bangalore South seat.

“Congress finds itself in such a bad shape today that it has fielded a man worth thousands of crores of wealth, but with no aadhaar (credentials) whatsoever for himself,” the Gujarat chief minister said at a BJP rally near Electronic City in the Bangalore South constituency.

BJP had strategically chosen the venue to take its fight to the IT heartland of Electronic City — which is home to a number of IT companies, including Infosys, the firm Nilekani co-founded. The party, unsure of which direction the votes of IT professionals swing, brought Modi into their midst to speak at length on Aadhaar, ‘sluggish’ IT exports and ‘governance deficit’.

Kumar has been under incessant onslaught from Nilekani, who spares no opportunity to call him an ‘absentee’ MP with scant respect for his constituency. In his Hindi speech, Modi wondered whether Aadhaar made any sense and said Congress was unable to convince even the Supreme Court which has been pulling up the government over the project. “It is a political gimmick with no vision,” Modi alleged.

He said he had raised many questions on Aadhaar from the security point of view on how it would enrol people in border areas and how illegal immigrants would be prevented from securing a card. “The people who thought of themselves as having given birth to IT in this country refused to listen to a common man like me. Even the SC has demanded answers,” Modi said and alleged the Aadhaar programme was a bundle of lies in whose name the treasury was looted.

A day after Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi claimed credit for his party for developing Bangalore into an information technology hub, Modi sought credit for the NDA regime under Atal Bihari Vajpayee for bringing a comprehensive IT law, which he said boosted IT exports.

When NDA ruled the country, the country registered 40% growth in annual IT exports, but the same sank to 30% during the first five years of the UPA regime, and to 9% during UPA-II.

“I have come to the land of IT. Please tell me how you will explain this,” Narendra Modi said.