Congress to expose alleged failures of BJP govt, remind 'its rule' in poll-bound Gujarat

With an eye on the upcoming Assembly elections in Gujarat Congress has decided to focus their poll campaign on the comparison between the 27 years of BJP rule in the State and 27 years of Congress rule before that, writes ETV Bharat's Amit Agnihotri.

New Delhi: The Congress is going to focus on the alleged failures of the BJP government in Gujarat and present a comparison of the past 27 years of saffron party rule vis-a-vis the 27 years before that when the grand old party was in power, to woo the voters. Assembly elections will be held in Gujarat later this year.

Senior leaders including AICC in-charge of Gujarat Raghu Sharma and state unit chief Jagdish Thakor along with CLP leader Sukhram Rathwa met Priyanka Gandhi Vadra and in charge organization KC Venugopal on Monday to fine-tune the poll campaign.

The grand old party, which regularly blames the ruling party in Gujarat for favouring the rich and the influential, will focus on presenting an alternative Gandhian approach to development, where the food growers and the forest dwellers are better off along with the city residents.

“The BJP has been in power in the state for the past 27 years but development has not benefited the poor. We will present a comparison of the development in the state under saffron party rule and the earlier period when the Congress was in power,” a Congress strategist said. “Look where things have reached today. The state is being run from Delhi as the Chief Minister (Bhupendra Patel) is only in name,” he said.

Making a comparison, the party strategists said that the state witnessed the industrial revolution during the Congress rule, got prestigious institutions like IIM, Ahmedabad and National Institute of Design, a cooperative model including Amul, which ushered in the white (milk) revolution is a shining example, the foundation of Sardar Sarovar dam project, and was ahead in education and health care sectors. Now a large number of government schools lack teachers, they said, adding that the farmers too were having a tough time.

“The farmers are suffering. The promise to take canal water to them has not been fulfilled over the past decades. I have extensively toured the north Gujarat areas. No submersible pumps can be installed there as the water table is very low at around 1200 feet. The farmers can barely produce 1-2 quintals of crop per acre which is very low as compared to Punjab or Haryana,” said a senior AICC functionary supervising Gujarat.

“The Tribals too are in a poor condition,” he said, adding that the Adivasi Satyagraha, launched by Rahul Gandhi in May, helped the opposition party mobilise the forest dwellers and was instrumental in forcing the state government to cancel the controversial Par-Tapi-Narmada river-linking project, which would have displaced thousands of Tribals.

“But that is not enough, we have prepared a detailed document which lists the phase-wise development of the forest dwellers. Also, we have decided to visit 10 lakh Tribal households during the coming months,” said the leader.

To woo the youth who are suffering from joblessness, the party recently staged protests over the Agnipath scheme and has tasked the Youth Congress and the NSUI to launch “Rozgar Do” drives across the state.