Even before the defamatory dust raised against Jay Amitbhai Shah settles, the BJP and the Congress have taken the battle into each other’s backyards. BJP boss Amit Shah and Union minister Smriti Irani are camping in Gandhi pocketborough Amethi, lashing out at each barb Rahul Gandhi has been firing at them from BJP bastion Gujarat.
As Congress vice-president Rahul played up the Congress’s “development has gone crazy” plank in Gujarat, Shah sought to fact-check the development work done in Amethi. Speaking at a rally, Shah said Rahul was unable to see the progress in Gujarat because he was “sporting Italian spectacles”.
Vowing that the BJP would ring in the kind of progress in Amethi that three generations of the Nehru-Gandhis had not managed, he said: “Rahul is mocking at the development in Gujarat. I want to to ask the ‘shahzada’ of the Congress what your three generations have given to Amethi. I want to ask you that you have been MP here for a long time but why is there no collector’s office, TB hospital and Radio FM here?”
Unveiling a slew of projects for Amethi, Shah said: “You have trusted a family for 60 years, now trust BJP and Modi.”
At another rally in Sitapur, Shah said that Rahul was touring Gujarat when Amethi was in a bad way. “Power is for service, not enjoyment,” the BJP boss said. “Rahul baba has left Amethi in crisis despite being chosen from there.”
In Gujarat, Rahul tried to connect with the tribals as he visited Ahmedabad, Kheda and Anand. In Karjan, however, he raked up the row on the alleged business dealings of Shah’s son to take a potshot at Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Claiming that Modi had once said he would play “watchman” against corruption, Rahul questioned what role he was now essaying when “a theft has taken place”.
He also criticised Union ministers and BJP leaders who defended Jay Shah, saying the government’s flagship scheme for the girl child — Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao — should be rechristened as a scheme to save Shah’s son.
In Vadodara, Rahul stirred a hornet’s nest claiming the RSS and the BJP did not give any importance to women and not many were seen in RSS shakhas. “The BJP’s thinking is that till women are silent they are good, when they start speaking up they try to shut them,” he claimed. In Amethi, Smriti Irani chipped in with her attack on the Gandhis. She said Rahul was talking development when the Rajiv Gandhi Foundation had not returned the land taken from farmers.