‘Modi’s Gujarat the best’

If voted to power, the BJP will turn the Capital and the country into “Modi’s Gujarat”, which is a state without corruption and full of development, said Lal Krishna Advani in his maiden rally in Delhi, reports Avishek G Dastidar.

If voted to power, the BJP will turn the Capital and the country into “Modi’s Gujarat”, which is a state without corruption and full of development, said Lal Krishna Advani in his maiden rally in Delhi on Saturday.

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The 82-year-old leader made a strong pitch for the Gujarat model of development in states like Delhi. “Villages in Gujarat get 24-hour electricity through a novel scheme. If such a big state can do it, why can’t a small city like Delhi? We will make it happen here and elsewhere in India,” he said.

At the rally in support of South Delhi candidate Ramesh Bidhuri, Advani touched upon issues that the party hopes to capitalise locally — power supply and inflation — and linked them to corruption.

“Corruption has led to the increase in price of everyday items. No work takes place if there is corruption and the Congress-ruled states like Delhi are a prime example of that,” he said and claimed that the BJP-ruled states had purged corruption from the administration.

He also also brought up the topic of terrorism reminding the audience the horrors of the serial bomb blasts last year.

“No one will blast bombs at bus stands and markets when we are in power because we have zero tolerance towards terrorism,” he said.

And to work up a crescendo in the whole fervour of the rally, Advani used arguably the BJP’s most favourite, pan-India subject after Ayodhya: Pokharan nuclear tests.

“We at the Sangh Parivar in 1964 were the first to decide that when we come to power we would make atom bombs. That was because China had defeated India in 1962 war and we could not digest that,” he said.