Guj polls battle of casteism, dynasty against development:Shah

Bhavnagar: BJP president Amit Shah today said the Gujarat election was not just a fight between two parties but a battle between Congress’s casteism and dynastic rule and Prime Minster Narendra Modi’s developmental politics. Shah also took a jibe at Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi, saying his visits to Gujarat had increased as he thought the state was a “tourist spot”.

“The Gujarat election 2017 is not just a fight between two parties or a fight for who will become the chief minister, but it is to decide if ‘jativad’ (casteism) and ‘vanshvad’ (dynastic rule) will win or Narendra Modi’s ‘vikasvad’ (development politics),” Shah said here.

He was addressing a rally before Gujarat BJP president Jitu Vaghani filed his nomination from the Bhavnagar (west) seat. “The people of Gujarat have to decide, that will they choose the Congress which had tried to create a caste divide between 1985 and 1995 by putting the KHAM theory into practice or chose the development and stability provided by the BJP government from 1995 to 2017,” Shah said.

KHAM, an acronym for Kshatriyas, Harijans, Adivasis (tribals) and Muslims, was often seen as a potent vote bloc. “This time the Congress has tried to outsource its campaign and is just indulging in casteist politics to win the Gujarat polls,” Shah alleged. The BJP president said it was time for the people of Gujarat to decide if they would choose “casteism, dynastic rule, minority appeasement or the developmental politics and stability offered by the BJP”.

“Friends, our leader Narendra Modi has started the process of ridding India of the politics of casteism, dynasty and minority appeasement,” Shah said. Targeting Rahul Gandhi, he said the UPA government had done nothing for Gujarat.

“Rahul Gandhi thinks that this is a tourist spot. He is coming here quite often. I don’t have any problem with that but he should come here and give an account of what the Sonia-Manmohan (UPA) government, which ruled in Delhi for 10 years, did for Gujarat,” Shah said.

“They (UPA) did nothing. After Narendra Modi came to power in Delhi, he gave the bullet train, he gave the ‘Ro-Ro’ ferry service, he gave the international airport (for the Saurashtra region) and he resolved all the pending problems that Gujarat had with the Centre,” he said.