In Gujarat, Sonia Gandhi Slams Narendra Modi

By HARESH PANDYA

RAJKOT, Gujarat

Speaking before a rally of about 150,000 people in the scorching heat on Wednesday, the Congress Party president Sonia Gandhi slammed Gujarat's chief minister and accused the opposition of lying to the state's citizens.

Mrs. Gandhi's speech comes as campaigning for state elections heats up in the western state of Gujarat. The state's controversial chief minister Narendra Modi may be the opposition's candidate for prime minister in the next national election, which has also piqued interest in the race.

Though Mrs. Gandhi never mentioned the forthcoming elections in Gujarat during her 15-minute speech, conducted in chaste Hindi, it seemed designed to encourage the Congress Party workers and woo voters.

Mrs. Gandhi began her address by invoking Mohandas K. Gandhi, who was born in Gujarat.

“I bow my head to him,” she began. “It is 169 years since the sun rose from this land and spread luster in the country, in the world, with his light,” she said. “The Congress Party has followed his ideals all these years.”

During her speech, she brushed aside Mr. Modi's oft-repeated claims that he has made Gujarat the most developed state in the country, and criticized his party, the Bharatiya Janata Party, for its attacks on the Congress Party-led United Progressive Alliance, or U.P.A., which runs the central government.

“It is the Congress Party that has laid the foundation of development in Gujarat,” Mrs. Gandhi said.

“No other political party, no individual, has done the kind development work the Congress Party has done in Gujarat,” she said. “But some people, who tend to look negatively at whatever we do, try to take false credit for the development of Gujarat. Why don't they tell people the truth?”

“Gujarat's true development is Congress's vow,” she said, “and this development will be f rom every level, every class of society.” The Congress Party has been inspired by Mahatma Gandhi and the independence leader Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel “to create a new Gujarat,” she said. “And we will definitely create it.”

Congress leaders like Jawaharlal Nehru and Mr. Patel, among others, played a significant role in the progress of Gujarat, Mrs. Gandhi said. The billion-dollar Narmada dam project was started when the Congress Party was in power in Gujarat, she said, but under the current government it has not fulfilled its potential.

“This project is meant for farmers. But the Narmada waters have not yet reached the farmers of Saurashtra in the last ten years,” she said. She was referring to many dry and arid areas of the Saurashtra region of Gujarat, where people continue to live in drought-like situations because of inadequate rains.

“Poor farmers in Saurashtra have been committing suicide. Fodder is not available to their cattle,” she said, and she called for the current state government to “give a clear picture of the problems faced by the poor farmers, so people can know the truth.”

Mrs. Gandhi also spoke of Gujarat's fishermen, some of whom are regularly captured by Pakistani marines when they stray into foreign territory while fishing in the Arabian Sea. “I have also concern for the fishermen of Gujarat, and our government will definitely look into their problems,” she said.

Blasting the Modi regime for accusing the U.P.A. government of not granting Gujarat the funds due to it, she said: “The central funds given to Gujarat are 50 percent higher than what the B.J.P.-led National Democratic Alliance government had given it. But the state government has kept such facts concealed from the people.”

Speaking of the escalating prices of crude oil and other commodities, Mrs. Gandhi said the nation was going through an economic crisis. While the central government is concerned, s tate governments also need to take measures to curtail prices, she contended. “It is the responsibility of the state governments, too, to take adequate measures,” she said. “Why doesn't the Gujarat government bring the VAT down? Gujarat has the highest VAT rate in the country.”

Mrs. Gandhi also accused the recent government of not doing enough to protect women and minorities. “In Gujarat, when poor Dalits ask for their rights, they are given bullets. Women are not safe here and are subject to all sorts of persecutions,” she said. The statement seemed to be an indirect reference to a recent incident in Thangadh, a town in Rajkot district famous for its ceramics, where three Dalit youths were gunned down by the police. The youths had been pelting stones at the police following a community clash, local news reports said.

Mrs. Gandhi also took the opportunity to castigate the B.J.P. for not allowing the Parliament to run for many days, and accused the opp osition of not doing enough to battle corruption. “The B.J.P.'s views and actions about corruption are both different,” she said. “They did not allow the Lokpal Bill to pass and yet they talk about abolishing corruption. Actually, they are not against Lokpal; they are against Congress.”

“Are they against corruption?” Mrs. Gandhi asked. “I leave it to the people of this country to decide.”

Throughout the speech, she never mentioned Mr. Modi by name. But she did criticize his “so-called achievements.” “Why is the chief minister making so much noise and misguiding the people?” she asked.

Clad in a sari, Mrs. Gandhi arrived in Rajkot straight from New Delhi by a special flight and was given a rousing welcome at the airport by the Congress Party officials of Gujarat. She then visited Kaba Gandhino Delo, where Mohandas Gandhi used to live when he attended the old Alfred High School, in the old city of Rajkot, which has been turned into a M ahatma Gandhi Memorial.

After offering prayers there and spending a few minutes at the memorial, she went to Ramakrishna Mission, where she prostrated herself before the statue of Ramakrishna Paramhans, the spiritual guru of Swami Vivekananda, who raised global awareness of Hinduism. She headed to the venue of her public rally after offering prayers and receiving blessings and prasad, or blessed food, from the monks and planting a tree close to the one planted by her husband, Rajiv Gandhi, during his visit to Ramakrishna Mission in 1980s.

Many observers, including local media, estimated the crowd at 150,000 people, but Congress Party leaders said there were more than 200,000. A large number of people at the rally were from different villages of Rajkot district, and outside the rally venue were rows and rows of trucks and buses that were used to bring a number of those attendants.