Subdued Modi accuses Congress of defamation in Chhatarpur

It was a somewhat subdued, off colour Narendra Modi who addressed a rally in Chhatarpur, Madhya Pradesh, on Monday afternoon. The BJP’s prime ministerial candidate employed his usual rhetoric, but minus the usual aggression, when he took on the Congress at the Centre and Congress General Secretary Digvijaya Singh, who he called the chairman of the Congress’ ’lies manufacturing factory’. Under fire for the unfolding scandal in which his then Home Minister in Gujarat Amit Shah is accused of illegally deploying surveillance techniques to track a young woman in Ahmedabad – with tapes showing Amit Shah referring to an unnamed “saheb” – Modi expectedly attacked the Congress and accused the party of defaming him. “Madam Sonia,” he said, accusing the Congress of employing lies and defamation to curb him and the BJP: “You cannot keep us down”. [caption id=“attachment_1235831” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] Reuters[/caption] He appeared to make a reference to senior Congress leader from Madhya Pradesh Digvijaya Singh who he called a ‘badbola’ or an over-talkative person. “He has opened a lies manufacturing factory, he is the chairman of this factory,” he said. But there was nothing to counter the growing charges against him and Shah in the speech. Instead, he accused the Congress of being unable to fight the BJP and him on issues of development. The Gujarat chief minister then spoke briefly about roads and agriculture in Madhya Pradesh and the state’s stellar performance in agriculture, but the largest part of his speech was reserved for some repetitive barbs. “The PM is saying the BJP has lowered the level of politics. But I want to ask the PM, who has destroyed the prestige of the Prime Minister’s chair?” He also lampooned the PM for his party vice-president calling an ordinance he signed “nonsense, nonsense, nonsense” in public while he was away in the United States. “I understand your pain. You can’t speak against those who caused you that pain, but that doesn’t mean you accuse us,” he said. He then made a reference to Rahul Gandhi calling the BJP a party of thieves. “You asked the Opposition on the floor of the Lok Sabha whether any country’s PM is called a thief. Now is it okay for your partymen to call the BJP a thief.” Repeating a train of thought he had deployed only on Sunday in Bangalore, he then challenged the Gandhi family, asking whether rules of defamation apply only to that one dynasty. “I don’t belong to the elite, I can never enter that club” he said, before going on to blame the Congress at the Centre for roadblocks in the path of Madhya Pradesh’s progress, accusing the UPA of deliberately curbing tourism in Madhya Pradesh and more. The strongest rhetoric was left to the end: “Dilli mein sarkar badalne waali hai. Inka jaana tay hai,” he said, predicting that the BJP will form the government at the Centre in 2014. “That much is pucca,” he said.