As campaign ends, Modi & Rahul turn to the gods

On the final day of campaigning, before Gujarat votes in its second phase of polls on December 14, star campaigners Narendra Modi and Rahul Gandhi sought divine blessings.

While Prime Minister Modi flew in a seaplane to the shrine of Goddess Ambaji atop a hill in North Gujarat, Rahul, the Congress president-elect, drove to the Lord Jagannath temple in Ahmedabad.

Modi virtually produced a rabbit out of the hat at his last election meeting on Monday night, disclosing that he would take a seaplane from the Sabarmati river-front to the famous Ambaji Temple. It was a closely-guarded secret, and not even the State BJP leadership was aware. On Tuesday morning, the seaplane, piloted by a Japanese national, landed near the Sardar Bridge on the Sabarmati. From there the PM took off for Dhorai dam in Mehsana district. He then went to the Ambaji Temple by road to pay obeisance.

The 13th century temple, situated atop the Aravalli ranges, falls in the Danta (ST) Assembly constituency.

The Jagannath Temple, where Rahul sought blessings, is in the Jamalpur-Khadia constituency of Ahmedabad and has a large Muslim population.

The Congress leader claimed a “great tide” in favour of the Congress and predicted a zabardast (tremendous) result when votes would be counted on December 18. He later described Modi’s seaplane flight as a “gimmick and a distraction” to camouflage the real issues bogging down the BJP, which has “panicked” after Modi’s “lopsided development model” was exposed by the “robust” Congress campaigning.

A In early 2014, veteran BJP leader LK Advani had praised Modi as a “great event manager”. Tuesday’s seaplane mega-show was an example of this event management as thousands of curious people gathered, amid chants of “Modi, Modi” by frenzied BJP workers, to witness the spectacle mounted by Modi that seemed to overshadow all other issues at stake in the election.

The single-engine seaplane having a capacity for 14 passengers, was purported to be the first-of-its-kind in India, and brought to Gujarat, ostensibly, to promote tourism. The small plane needs no runway and can land on flat roads and still waters.

The BJP claimed that for the first time in India, a seaplane was used for tourism promotion and that a PM was flying in a single-engine aircraft. Sambit Patra, BJP spokesman, described the event as “vikas flying”, in an apparent answer to critics who have dubbed vikas (development) as having gone berserk.

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