Narendra Modi pans Rahul Gandhi's 'aakashvani'

Sachin Parashar,TNN | Dec 30, 2013, 03.43 AM IST

RANCHI: BJP's prime ministerial candidateNarendra Modi may have decided to hold back his shahzade barb against Rahul Gandhi for now but Sunday he coined a new term to address the Congress vice president - aakashvani.

Modi was driving home his point that Gandhi's attempts to distance himself from some of the decisions taken by his party, especially on issues related to corruption and price rise, had further exposed the Congress party and UPA government.

"We are familiar with the idea of aakashvani in the puranas but while these forced people to think, the ones coming from Delhi have exposed the deceitfulness of the Congress party," said Modi, addressing a rally here at Dhurva.The Gujarat CM did not directly name Gandhi though.

Modi referred to the recent meeting Gandhi had with Congress chief ministers after which he announced that he had asked the Maharashtra government to reconsider its rejection of a judicial commission report which has indicted several former Congress chief ministers in the Adarsh scam.

"The people responsible for this mess...they do aakashvani and then go and hide. Aisa lagta hai jo kuch hua us se inka Koi Lena dena hi nahi hai," said Modi, adding aakashvani can't help fulfil the dreams of the nation.

"Now there is aakashvani CMS will do this and that. If there is even an iota of honesty left in them, they should explain how corruption is now all pervasive in Jharkhand," he said.

Modi had recently said that those responsible for rampant corruption were the same people who were now giving updesh (gratuitous advice) over the issue.

This was Modi's first public appearance after a court in Ahmedabad last week upheld the clean chit to him by the SIT in the 2002 Gulbarg society riot case. Immediately after that Modi had written a blog reflecting the pain, he said, he had suffered because of the 2002 Gujarat riots and how these had shaken him to the core.

Modi did not betray any jubilation he may have felt because of the development and chose not to bring up the issue here. It was only party president Rajnath Singh who spoke about how Modi had been made to suffer for 13 years for his alleged role in Gujarat riots by Congress and others.

Modi referred to "sampradayikta ka zahar" as he made a larger point about the people in the country were looking forward to at a time when the Congress party had become a liability for the country. "People want development, not division. They want opportunities, not political opportunism and security, not communalism," he said.

Modi, in fact, mostly restricted himself to state affairs as he attacked the Congress for poverty and backwardness in Jharkhand, a state which accounts for close to 40 per cent of India's mineral sources. ?He hit out at the Centre for inflation saying he and 3 UPA CMs had submitted a report to PM on how to check inflation 2 years ago but that was ignored.

"Under Vajpayee, 3 states were created - Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh and Uttarakhand (in a slip of tongue he referred to it as Badrinath). You have to ask why Chhattisgarh moved so fast and the other 2 lagged behind," he said, adding that Jharkhand was now in its formative years and needed support from Delhi in the form of a BJP government at the Centre.