BJP is attacking Rahul Gandhi in Amethi for taking on Modi in Gujarat
Amethi seems to be turning into a battleground for the BJP that was clearly out to settle scores with Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi for his recent foray into Gujarat, the home state of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
A traditional political bastion of the Gandhi family, it has been the biggest eyesore for the BJP, whose blue-eyed celebrity nominee Smriti Irani had lost the crucial 2014 Lok Sabha election from Amethi to the Gandhi scion.
Even as she was credited for losing with a barely 12 per cent margin of 1.2 lakh votes and rewarded with a berth in the Rajya Sabha as well as in the Narendra Modi cabinet, neither she nor her party have been able to get over the pangs of the Amethi defeat.
Ever since she has made it a ritual to visit Amethi at measured intervals and kept renewing her challenge to the Congress party’s biggest icon. She has also been repeatedly offering sops to the people of the sleepy rustic constituency and also makes it a point to remind them how the Gandhi family neglected the place for decades.
It was in continuation of that exercise that she was back in Amethi on Monday. And this time she has two heavyweights to follow her as her reinforcements on Tuesday. And these were none other than party chief Amit Shah and the saffron clad Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath.
In fact, Amit Shah was made to cut short his much-hyped campaign in poll-bound Kerala, where he had Adityanath too in tow.
The trio descended in Amethi to put up an ostentatious rally with a clear-cut agenda - to give a befitting reply to Rahul Gandhi, who just spent a few days in Gujarat, lambasting PM Modi and the BJP government there. Gandhi made it a point to question Modi’s tall claims on Gujarat.
Smriti Irani, Amit Shah and Yogi Adityanath trained their guns on Gandhi, who was in Amethi for three consecutive days just about a week ago. Significantly, the UP administration had tried its best to prevent the Congress vice-president from undertaking the trip.
Amethi district magistrate shot off a letter to Gandhi expressing his constraints in providing the desired security to him “in view of larger deployments being made for Dusshera and Muharrum”. The district magistrate, who apparently chose to become more loyal than the king, went to the extent of threatening the local NDTV correspondent for taking up the issue. Eventually, he had to backtrack as Gandhi made it loud and clear that he would not change his programme - security or no security. In any case, his SPG cover is always around him.
Precisely six days later now, the saffron brigade landed in the Gandhi bastion. That the trio’s Amethi trip was a reply to Gandhi's Gujarat visit was spelt out in Yogi Adityanath’s speech at a public rally organised by the BJP leadership. To hide the BJP guilt of planning the trip in reaction to the Congress vice-president's Gujarat visit, the chief minister sought to convince the crowd that while their was programme scheduled well in advance, it was Gandhi who suddenly planned a trip to Amethi to preempt the BJP leaders’ visit.
"Main to Smriti Ji se kah raha tha ki apna ye Amethi ka karyakram to ek maheene pehle tay kar diya tha...ki Amethi me is October 10 ko karyakram hona hai aur us karyakram ke liye hum log bhi apni date pehle se tay kar ke rakhe the ki October 10 ko kaheen aur naheen jayenge kyonki manneeya adhyaksh ji jab ayenge to unke swagat ka avsar prapt hoga hume. Hum log bhi is karyakram me rahenge aur tab se hum October 10 ke karyakram ki taiyari kar rahe the. Lekin achanak do tareekh ko dekha ki Amethi me in Dilli ke ek shahzade bhi kisi yatra par aa gaye hain (I was telling Smriti ji that I had planned this trip to Amethi almost a month ago ever since I was told that a big event is being planned here by our party president. I made it clear that I would reserve this day for Amethi and not go anywhere else. After all that would also give me an opportunity to welcome the party chief on the UP soil. We were busy preparing ourselves for this event when suddenly I came to known on October 2 that a prince has come here from Delhi)," Yogi said.
Sounding quite cheesed off with Gandhi’s Gujarat visit, Irani said, "Rahul Gandhi Gujarat jaate hain to waha ka uphaas karte hain. Par kam se kam wo itna to batla dein ki Amethi ke haspatal mein jo TB unit ab BJP ke raj mein lag raha hai woh Congress ke shashan kaal mein kyun nahi lag paya (when Rahul Gandhi goes to Gujarat, he tries to make mockery of that state, but at least, he should tell us why he could not even get a TB unit created in the local hospital during years of Congress rule, which is being done now under the BJP regime)."
She further listed out a few other things that the BJP government was doing for Amethi.
Shah pointedly trained his guns on Gandhi for “the utter neglect of Amethi”, that, he said, has remained undeveloped even to this day. He observed, “Amethi ki dharti par se main Congress ke shahzade shri Rahul Gandhi se poochhna chahta hoon ki teen-teen peerhiyon ko Amethi ki janta ne vote diya... aap hum se teen saal ka hisaab mangte ho Rahul baba. Modi Ji ne teen saal me kya kiya? Yeh Amethi ki janta teen peerhi ka hisab mangti hai (I would like to ask the Congress prince Rahul Gandhi from the soil of Amethi what he has done for the people of Amethi who voted for him and his three previous generations. Rahul Baba, you keep asking us what Modiji has done in three years? Now the people of Amethi are asking what your three generations have done for them)?"
The rally distinctly spoke of opulence in sharp contrast to the rallies and visits of Rahul or Sonia Gandhi. The organisers had put up a giant stage, adorned with exotic flowers under a huge "pandal" with chairs for the comfort of the audience who had converged at the venue in buses, trucks, tractors and jeeps.
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