Even as the 2014 Lok Sabha elections inched a step closer to the finish line, with campaigning ending for Wednesday’s polling on 89 seats, political parties on Monday continued to trade personal attacks on one another’s leadership.
The Congress questioned the alleged “close links” of the Bharatiya Janata Party’s prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi with Surat-based Afroz Fatta, accused of running a Rs 700-crore hawala racket by the Enforcement Directorate last month.
BJP shot back, claiming some members of the Planning Commission, appointed by the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government, as well as those of the National Advisory Council, headed by Congress President Sonia Gandhi, received funding from the US’ Ford Foundation.
The political temperature rose in Jammu & Kashmir as well, with an intense war of words between National Conference’s Farooq Abdullah and BJP’s Modi and Arun Jaitley. Similarly, the bitter exchanges between the Trinamool Congress and the BJP leadership went on for a second day.
On Monday, campaigning ended for seats where voters would decide the fate of most of BJP’s top leadership, as also the top leaders of several other parties, including the Congress.
Important BJP candidates in the fray for Wednesday’s polling phase, the seventh, include Modi from Vadodara, L K Advani from Gandhinagar, Jaitley from Amritsar, party president Rajnath Singh from Lucknow, Uma Bharati from Jhansi and Kirti Azad from Darbhanga.
The National Conference’s Abdullah and the Congress’ Sonia Gandhi will also be in the race from their respective constituencies of Srinagar and Rae Bareli.
Nine seats in West Bengal, one in Jammu & Kashmir, all 13 in Punjab, all 26 in Gujarat, all 17 in Telangana, seven in Bihar, 14 in Uttar Pradesh and one seat each in the Union Territories of Dadra and Nagar Haveli and Daman & Diu go to polls on Wednesday.
BJP again asked the Congress on Monday to explain the links of a Gandhi family confidant with a meat exporter being investigated by the income-tax department for hawala operations.
BJP said the Congress had shown arrogance by not responding to the party’s allegations made on Sunday against “damad shree” Robert Vadra.
In Srinagar, Abdullah had on Sunday said all those voting for BJP’s Modi should drown in sea and that Kashmir might not remain part of India if the country turned communal. He clarified on Monday that his comment was in response to Bihar BJP leader Giriraj Singh’s earlier remark that all those voting against Modi should go to Pakistan.
Modi, in a tweet, retorted that if “there is someone who has harmed secularism the most, it is you and your family”.
Jaitley said Abdullah, a Union minister and former J&K chief minister, should take a dip in the Dal Lake as a measure of repentance for staying quiet when Kashmiri Pandits were being driven out of the state.
Abdullah’s son and J&K Chief Minister Omar Abdullah said his family didn’t need a secularism certificate from Modi and that Kashmiri Pandits left when Jagmohan, who later became a member of Parliament on a BJP ticket, was the state’s governor.
Observers said the heated exchange could only help polarise opinion in favour of Abdullah in Srinagar, where he is in a tough electoral battle with his People’s Democratic Party rival.
In Bengal, Modi’s earlier claim that one of Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee’s paintings was sold for Rs 1.8 crore attracted a barrage of attacks. On Sunday, the Trinamool Congress’ Derek O’Brien described Modi as the “butcher of Gujarat” and followed that up on Monday by saying Modi was somebody from whose hands blood was dripping.
Today, O’Brien, apart from his party’s Mukul Roy and Bengal Finance Minister Amit Mitra, asked Modi not to indulge in personal attacks. They dismissed Modi’s claims on sale of Banerjee’s paintings, while Mitra raised the issue of the Rs 25,000-crore UTI scam that took place during the National Democratic Alliance rule.
Mitra asked why Modi was silent on that, as also the Balco scam, which “was a complete erosion of public money in the name of divestment”.
BJP spokesperson Nirmala Sitaraman said in Delhi that Banerjee’s party was “rattled” by the response Modi’s rallies had received in Bengal. She added TMC, along with the Samajwadi Party, had joined the “cottage industry against Modi”. She said all these parties had come together to defend a corrupt Congress at a time when the elections were about “Congress-mukt (free) India”.