Junagadh/Jesar: Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi last night offered to tender a public apology if his allegation that Rs 1,880 crore was spent from state exchequer for Congress President Sonia Gandhi’s foreign trips is found to be false, hours after he made the claim.
“I had said this thing based on the report of a newspaper. If my information is wrong, today I say that I will publicly accept this mistake”, Modi said addressing a rally in Junagadh.
Earlier in the day, Modi, addressing a rally at Jesar, targeted the Congress President by claiming that Rs 1880 crore has been spent from the public exchequer for her foreign trips.
Addressing the Jungadh rally, Modi said a response given by the government to an RTI application of a youth of Hisar in Haryana, published in a newspaper on 12 July this year, was the basis for his claim.
Narendra Modi during an election rally. PTI
However, the youth Ramesh Sharma questioned the figures by Modi and said he had not received any reply to his RTI query.
Speaking at Jesar, Modi said “to those Congress friends, who are accusing our government of uncontrolled expenditure, I want to ask: is it not true that on the foreign travels of the President of the Congress Party, Sonia Gandhi, in the past three years, Rs 1,880 crore has been spent from the public exchequer”.
“This clearly means that more than the total yearly budget of Bhavnagar, Jamnagar, Junagadh and Rajkot Municipal Corporation combined has been spent only on the foreign trips of Sonia Gandhi and on her luxury hotel stays,” he added.
“I want to ask the Delhi Sultanate what is the compulsion that they have to allow this uncontrolled spending of poor people of the country,” Modi told the rally as part of his month-long pre-assembly election tour of the state.
Sonia Gandhi will be launching Congress’ campaign for the state elections on Wednesday by addressing a rally of farmers in Rajkot. This will be her first visit to the poll-bound state.
PTI
