Senior Congress leader Jyotiraditya Scindia on Thursday appealed to the people of Gujarat to end the BJP’s 22-year rule in the State. He urged them to vote out the saffron party in the Assembly elections next month.
On a campaign tour of Gujarat, Mr. Scindia said that with the Assembly polls would begin the end of BJP rule, first in Gujarat, then in other States and finally nationally in 2019.
“Ever since the party came to power at the Centre, there has been an environment of intolerance in the country. With the rise of vigilantes and other groups, democracy has been undermined,” said the young parliamentarian. He said there had been no action against cow vigilantes and other right wing groups who had often taken law into their own hands. “In Gujarat, Dalits are at the receiving end. On the one hand, BJP talks about Dalits’ rights and empowerment, while on the other the Dalits are subjected to atrocities on a day-to-day basis in a State where the saffron party has been in power for more than two decades,” he said.
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‘A national shame’
Mr. Scindia described the public flogging of Dalits for skinning a dead cow in a village near Una as a national shame and said the incident exposed the BJP’s double standards where it concerns Dalits. Economic growth too, he said, had plummeted both in Gujarat as well as nationally, notwithstanding the tall claims by the ruling party. “On any social parameter, Gujarat lags behind. Here farmers are committing suicide, women are raped. But there is complete silence from the Prime Minister, who tweets on every incident that happens outside India,” he said.
Mr. Scindia claimed that Gujarat achieved double digit growth rate during the reign of the Congress governments headed by Madhavsinh Solanki and Chimanbhai Patel and it had then slowed down under the BJP governments.
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