Jammu and Kashmir chief minister Omar Abdullah on Saturday blamed BJP's prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi for 2002 Gujarat riots while exonerating the then Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee.
Answering questions on what was the first `Google +' hangout'' of the tech savvy chief minister, Abdullah ruled out possibility of an alliance with the NDA even in the future. ``Our alliance was with Atal Bihari Vajpayee and there is no person who is of his stature in the party,'' he said.
Holding Narendra Modi responsible for the 2002 Gujarat riots, he said, `` I resigned during Gujarat riots but it was not accepted, I believe that Modi was responsible for the riots, and not Atalji. And my pressing for resignation would have made him responsible, I didn't want to do that,'' he added.
"But I feel Atalji could have held Narendra Modi accountable," he said.
When asked what he thinks about Modi's presence on social media, Omar said, "His presence is one way- he talks everybody listens. Modi needs to be more responsive, it looks like he is sermonising people. Some engagement would be better than no engagement."
Although rejecting the projections of the exit polls for the upcoming elections Abdullah said that UPA has an `equal chance' of winning the elections.
``I don't believe that the difference shown by the exit polls between Congress and BJP is so huge. It can be anybodies game,'' he added.
Listing the achievements of the UPA government, Omar said that the Congress has a more unified agenda that the BJP.
``I don't believe that the difference shown by the exit polls between Congress and BJP is so huge. It can be anybodies game,'' he added.
Listing the achievements of the UPA government, Omar said that the Congress has a more unified agenda that the BJP.
"UPA has implemented schemes that have benefited people, such as food security, health, road development, right to education. The most important is UPA will not divide you, to govern you. It will unite to govern," he said.
On the fact that Hurriyat and opposition party PDP said NDA performance on Kashmir was better than UPA, Abdullah said, it was the separatist who did not come forward with their talk agenda.
``Statistics speak for themselves, the kind of development that has taken place with UPA. The number of militant attacks, civilians' deaths and militants' death have all gone down considerably in the last ten years,'' he said.
Abdullah, however, said that government had engaged the separatist camps in talks. ``They were asked them to come forward with what they expect from the talks something that was achievable but they never did,'' added Omar.
`` If the part of the responsibility is of government of India, a part of it lies with Hurriyat that they don't know what they want to talk about,'' he said.