Cong releases clip of Uma calling Modi vinash purush

“I know him since 1973… He is not a vikas purush, but a vinash purush. His claim of GDP growth and uplifting people from the BPL to APL category is fake… Gujarat got neither Ram nor roti. It should be freed from the vinash purush… It is the media which has made Modi so big, inflated the balloon,” Bharti had then told reporters.

Screening the clip, Congress spokesperson Abhishek Manu Singhvi said Bharti was not in BJP when she made these remarks, but the fact remains that she was “not saying these things in the middle of an election speech”, and hence there has to be some truth in what she said.

BJP spokesperson Meenakshi Lekhi shot back: “Desperate times have desperate measures. Congress’s desperation is writ large. How is anybody in the country concerned about what anybody said two-three years ago? Congress’s dependence on an old video shows that this is the last-ditch effort by the party to save its first family.”

Congress also sought to compare Modi to Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini and said he was like a “dictator” defined by “arrogance and pride”.

Referring to Modi’s interview to a news agency on Wednesday, Singhvi said, “PM contender says he will not apologise for 2002 riots and people’s court has already judged him. We presume by that he means victories in Gujarat. Electoral verdicts do not validate genocide or communalism. Hitler and Mussolini won more elections and by larger margins than anyone else. All dictators have only one thing in common — they believe they are the judge, jury and prosecution rolled into one.”

Uma asks EC to take legal action

New Delhi: BJP leader Uma Bharti Thursday asked the Election Commission to take legal action against “meticulous dissemination of concocted video clips” on social media by “anti-BJP parties” after the Congress released a video of her purportedly describing Narendra Modi as “vinash purush (agent of destruction)”. In a letter to the EC, Bharti alleged anti-BJP parties were distorting her speech in bits and pieces and releasing it on social media with an “ulterior motive and to gain political mileage by defaming her”. Bharti also said Modi is an “exceptional” personality for whom she has “great respect and regard”. PTI