N Nagaraja Rao
Gujarat chief minister Shri Narendra Modi launched the Bharatiya Janata Party’s election campaign in South India on August 11 by giving a clarion call to people of the country to get rid of the Congress and its dynastic rule .He said “Corruption has become all pervasive in the UPA rule. And people want to see good governance that can be achieved only by getting rid of the Congress and electing a responsive government.”
Shri Modi was addressing an impressive gathering at a public meeting named ‘Nava Bharatha Yuva Bheri’ at Lal Bahadur Shastri Stadium,Hyderabad, the first in a series of 100 such events planned nationwide in the run-up to the Lok Sabha elections. This is the first major meeting of Shri Modi after he became chairman of the BJP’s campaign committee. Modi’s youth conclave drew huge crowds to the stadium and perhaps for the first time the State unit issued passes charging Rs 5/- for each participants and the proceeds would be donated to the Uttarakhand relief fund. Many people had to contend with squatting outside and watching Modi on the six giant screens that were put up at Nizam College Grounds and also at Keshav Memorial School where he also unveiled a statue of Sardar Patel.
Shri Modi launched a tirade against Congress leadership and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh for their “non-serious attitude” to some key issues facing the country. “The Congress has become a burden on the country. Its leaders are not bothered about the people’s plight as answering them will make it pay a heavy price,” he emphasised. He said an anti-Congress wave is sweeping the country and the youth, farmers and the poor are waiting for the “corrupt UPA” to lose power. Criticising the UPA government over the Food Security Bill, he said the term ‘inclusive growth’ was bandied about a lot because the Congress practised exclusion for 60 years. During the NDA regime poor were taken care and had enough to eat thus there was no need of Food Security Bill and he specially heaped praise on Chattisgarh’s Raman Singh goverment that set an example for the nation to follow by streamlining the Public Distribution System.
He recalled Shri L K Advani’s fight for bringing back money stashed in foreign banks and lambasted the UPA government for its failure to act on it. He ridiculed the government’s monitory policy, and said when India got freedom in 1947, one rupee was equal to one dollar, but now a dollar is equal to the age of the Finance Minister drawing applause from the crowds.
Shri Modi reminded how late NT Rama Rao gave a fillip to anti-Congress politics in the past and appealed to the TDP to carry forward the legacy thereby fulfilling NTR’s dreams.
While addressing the most sensitive issue of bifurcation of Andhra Pradesh, Shri Modi choose to woo both the regions of Telangana and Seemandhra. He added that for the BJP, Seemandhra is as important as Telangana. “And I hope both states will do even better than Gujarat,” he said. He charged the Prime Minister with maintaining stoic silence when Pakistani soldiers killed Indian jawans in Kashmir and the Chinese continued incursions into India.
Earlier host of other leaders from the BJP such as Shri Nagam Janardhan Reddy, Shri Kishan Reddy, State President, Venkaiah Naidu and Shri Murlidhar Rao also spoke on this occassion.
