Modi, Rahul, Kejriwal to address rallies in Sunday political blitz

The faces of the three most watched political parties - Narendra Modi, Rahul Gandhi and Arvind Kejriwal- are all set to address massive rallies, as campaigning for the Lok Sabha elections kicks up a notch.

Modi will address a rally in Jagraon, Punjab, 40km from Ludhiana. The rally is expected to have a huge turnout, and several buses and trains have been booked to ferry people to the venue. Punjab Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal and BJP party president Rajnath Singh will also be present.

Rahul Gandhi will be in Dehradun, where he is set to address a rally at around 1.30pm. Besides addressing the rally, Gandhi will also review reconstruction efforts in the flood-hit areas and meet ex-servicemen.

Kejriwal meanwhile will be talking at Rohtak, Haryana, the the home district of Haryana Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda. AAP leaders Yogendra Yadav and Manish Sisodia are also likely to address the rally. The turnout has been large, with reporters at the venue saying that around 4-5000 people present at the venue.

Along with the rallies, the parties are also stepping up the attacks on one another.

Delhi Congress has kick started an ’expose-all’ campaign against former chief minister Arvind Kejriwal, whom it accused of abandoning the national capital at the mercy of bureaucrats to further his own political ambitions.

“Arvind Kejriwal has abandoned people at the mercy of Gods and bureaucrats. He is a runaway and we are launching a ‘Poll Khol Abhiyan’ against him to expose the lies he had been telling in the name of common man’s welfare,” Delhi Pradesh Congress Committee President Arvinder Singh Lovely said.

Meanwhile AAP has alleged that the Congress-led state government was creating hurdles before its Rohtak event.

“The Congress government is using tactics before the rally. Hooda is giving orders to remove the posters put up by us and auto drivers who are campaigning for us are being fined. The Haryana Urban Development Authority, on whose ground we are holding the rally, is also troubling us”, said Naveen Jaihind, a party leader from Haryana. He added that notices were also being sent to schools whose buses the party had roped in to ferry volunteers to the venue.

Meanwhile in Amritsar, Congress spokesperson and former MLA Sukhpal Singh Khaira said that the proposed ‘Fateh’ rally at Jagraon should be boycotted by the people of Punjab.

Addressing a press conference here today, Khaira also said that BJP should be taught a lesson in the upcoming Lok Sabha polls in view of its “anti-Punjab” and “anti-Sikh” policies. Modi had tried to uproot more than 50,000 Sikh families from the Kutch region of Gujarat, Khaira alleged, adding that, “to rub salt into the wounds of Sikh farmers, (the Gujarat CM) was now organising the ‘Fateh’ rally in Punjab”.