Even as campaigning came to an end on Tuesday in Gujarat which votes in the third phase of the Lok Sabha polls on April 30, chief minister Narendra Modi, Congress general secretary Rahul Gandhi and BJP's prime ministerial candidate LK Advani, made last-minute efforts to woo voters.
Modi tried to gain some last minute mileage by playing martyr on the riots issue while Congress general secretary Rahul Gandhi criticised the BJP for neglecting the poor. A day after the supreme court ordered a probe against Modi and 62 others for their role in the 2002 riots, the chief minister said it was a conspiracy by the Congress to hang him by implicating him in the communal riots of 2002.
“Congress na mitro ne maro khullo padkar chhe ke tamara ma takat hoy te kari lo. Have hu pachhi pani karvano nathi. Hu maut ke khauf thi darva valo manas nathi pan maut ne mutthi ma lai ne farva valo manas chhu (I openly challenge my friends of the Congress, do what you can do, I will not step back. I am not a man who is afraid of death. I carry death in the grip of my hand,” he said in rallies at Bhiloda and Palanpur.
Rahul, who addressed four meetings, said the BJP had forgotten the poor. “The BJP has rejected farmers, whereas the UPA government is the common man's government.
The BJP has divided the country into two - a poor people’s India and a rich man's India. Development is not bad but the benefits of development should reach everyone," he said at a rally in Mahesana. Advani hit out at the Congress for the CBI's clean chit to Ottavio Quattrocchi in the Rs64 crore Bofors scam.
