In December, Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh are going to polls and the BJP is trying its best to retain the former and wrest the latter from Congress, and vice versa for the Congress. However, Gujarat’s is the prestigious fight as the state is the home of the Prime Minister, Narendra Modi and the BJP takes pride in calling it a model state under the baton of Narendra Modi when he ruled the state as the Chief Minister. It is unfortunate for the party that after the exit of Narendra Modi, the state economically and administratively has been on constant decline. The anti-incumbency feelings have gripped the people. The BJP has lost many civic bodies to the Congress in recent past. Patel community is sore on the issue of reservation and its leader Hardik Patel is fast gaining ground. Sedition charges were levelled against him and then the charges were withdrawn to soothe him. Still the gulf of differences between him and the BJP is glaringly existing.
Against this backdrop, the Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi visited Gujarat more than once and got tremendous response. As a poll campaign, the Prime Minister visited Gujarat on October 16 and made every effort to take the people for a ride by launching number of schemes worth crore of rupees. He said it was a fight between development and dynasty, taunting the Congress. He also alleged that the Congress did not do justice to leaders like Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel and Morarji Desai. In his style of making comments, he levelled many other allegations against Congress. On the same morning before Modi’s speech Rahul Gandhi said in a tweet, “A weather report: Ahead of election, Gujarat will today have a rain of rhetoric.” He used Hindi phrase, ‘Jumlon ki barish.’ How the media has been managed to support the BJP may be observed from two TV reports. One TV report said there was a 7 lakh–strong audience in PM’s meeting. The other channel showed the empty chairs and said there were not more than one lakh people. Today, a number of electronic and print media units are giving false reports to support the BJP. This is the BJP style of allowing free Press. On the U-turn of the United States on Pakistan and saying that the ties with Pakistan are improving, Rahul Gandhi tweeted, “Modi Ji quick; looks like President Trump needs another hug.” His tweet referred to the Prime Minister’s last visit to the US when both leaders hugged and American President assured very good relations.
