BJP never fulfilled poll promises: Gohil

Ahmedabad: Congress leader Shaktisinh Gohil alleged that the BJP never fulfilled promises it made in its manifesto prior to the 2002 and 2007 state assembly elections. “The BJP had promised ‘ghar nu ghar’ prior to the 2002 and 2007 assembly elections, but the truth is that the BJP government, in the last 10 years, have not been able to provide homes to citizens in urban and rural areas,” the sitting MLA from Bhavnagar South seat said on Thursday.[caption id=“attachment_541004” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Challenging the BJP. Reuters[/caption] Ridiculing the Modi government for making hollow promises, Gohil said, “The promise that farmers, who had loans of more than Rs 10,000 would be waived off has not been kept. In addition, dark zone farmers have not been provided power connections.” Gohil said that the Narmada Canal work which the state government had promised to complete by 2010, is incomplete even in 2012, with Kutch and Saurashtra, which were promised water from Narmada, not receiving it. The BJP had vowed to set up diamond clusters and diamond processing centres in Saurashtra, which are also nowhere to be seen, he said. He lampooned BJP’s promise to turn Gujarat International Finance Tec-City (GIFT City) into Frankfurt and New York, adding that the site today is littered with Prosopis Juliflora, a shrub which spreads very quickly and is known in Gujarati as “Gando Baval”. Promises like setting up of a welfare fund for women journalists and increasing maternity leave for women from three to six months are still in limbo, he said. He said tribals and adivasis have been deprived of their rights by the BJP, which had also not implemented its promise to provide wheat at Rs 2 per kg and rice at Rs 3 per kilogram prior to the polls in 2002. Gohil will face BJP’s Parshottam Solanki, state fisheries minister, embroiled in a Rs 400-crore fisheries scam in Bhavnagar Rural.