Ahead of Congress president Sonia Gandhi’s rallies in Gujarat, party spokesperson Abhishek Manu Singhvi sharpened his attack on Chief minister and BJP’s prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi on Sunday calling him ‘man of damage to India’ (MODI).
Countering Mr. Modi’s jibe that the Congress is following the ‘RSVP’ - Rahul, Sonia, Vadra and Priyanka – model, Mr. Singhvi said, “My RSVP to Mr. Modi is that he is a ‘man of damage to India’ and he belongs to the ‘Bharat Jalao Party’ (BJP). He offers a cocktail of dictatorial tendencies, development distortion and trust deficit. He is anti-democratic .”
In the decades of Congress rule in Gujarat, from 1981-2001, the State consistently posted double-digit growth rate. “Gujarat always had high growth rate because of the enterprising nature of the Gujarati community and not because of Mr. Modi or the BJP.
In industrial development, Gujarat came fifth against Mr. Modi’s claim that it was the top State. In software export, it ranked 11th, on per capita income it ranked eighth, in urban-rural prosperity index it stood at the 14th and 12th spot respectively and fared poorly on human development indicators as well,” Mr. Singhvi said.
“Mr. Modi has brought Gujarat growth down. No Chief Minister has blown his or her trumpet the way he does. He has not done any chamatkar [miracle]. He tells pure lies and creates a bubble through a marketing strategy,”Mr. Singhvi said.