Taking a swipe at infighting in the ruling Congress in Rajasthan following a public spat between Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot and his former deputy Sachin Pilot, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday said an “ugly form” of politics was visible in the State. “This is a State where the CM does not have faith in his MLAs and they also don’t trust him,” Mr. Modi said.
Addressing a BJP rally at Abu Road in Sirohi district, Mr. Modi said the Congress leaders, fighting a political battle for power for the last five years, were busy in the game of “looting and saving the chair”. He said that while everyone was competing to insult each other, there was no one to take care of public welfare and the State’s development.
The Prime Minister’s remarks came in the wake of Mr. Pilot’s jibe that Mr. Gehlot’s “real leader” was the BJP’s Vasundhara Raje rather than his own party’s Sonia Gandhi. Mr. Gehlot had earlier claimed that Ms. Raje and two other BJP leaders had helped save his government during a rebellion staged by Mr. Pilot and 18 other Congress MLAs in 2020.
Mr. Modi said the Chief Minister’s chair in Rajasthan had been in trouble for five years and there was a complete breakdown of law and order under the Congress’ rule, with a sharp rise in crimes against women. “The Congress government is afraid of taking action against criminals because of its vote bank politics,” he said.
Mr. Modi also accused the Congress of going soft on terrorism and cited the acquittal of all the accused in the 2008 Jaipur serial blasts, which had claimed 71 lives, by the Rajasthan High Court recently. He alleged that the accused were let off because the State government did not fight the case strongly in the court.
Making a reference to the Assembly election in Karnataka, for which the polling was held on Wednesday, Mr. Modi said the Congress had risked the lives of members of the Hakki Pakki tribe from that State, who were stuck in Sudan. While the Union government was trying to evacuate them from the war-torn country, the Congress had created a ruckus and risked their lives by identifying them, he said.
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Mr. Modi earlier launched development projects worth ₹5,500 crore in Rajsamand district, while sharing the stage with Mr. Gehlot at the function. In his address, the Prime Minister said no priority had been given to infrastructure development in the country in the years after Independence. He said that those who measured “everything with votes” could not formulate development plans with the correct perspective.
In his address, Mr. Gehlot drew Mr. Modi’s attention to the pending projects, including the Eastern Rajasthan Canal Project awaiting the national project status, and said the opposition should be respected in the democracy to take the country to the path of progress in association with the ruling dispensation.
Mr. Gehlot later took exception to the Prime Minister’s criticism of the previous governments by making political statements in a government programme. “Modi- ji asked why the railway tracks, power infrastructure and medical colleges were not established earlier. He probably forgot that he got a flourishing country 67 years after Independence. This nation was not built in a day,” he said.
While Governor Kalraj Mishra and Assembly Speaker C.P. Joshi were among the dignitaries who attended the function in Rajsamand, former CM Ms. Raje, BJP State president C.P. Joshi and BJP MPs and MLAs from Sirohi, Udaipur, Pali and Jalore districts were present on the dais at the party’s rally in Abu Road.
