On the last day of the second leg of his Navsarjan Gujarat Yatra, Congress Vice-President Rahul Gandhi took a dig at the Gujarat government’s incentives to automobile giant Tata Motors and support to ‘select businessmen’.
Addressing a large gathering at Limkheda in Dahod district, Rahul compared incentives given to Tata Motors for its Nano car factory in Sanand with the UPA government’s MGNREGA scheme. “Where we spent ₹35,000 crore towards MNREGA to create employment in villages, the BJP government paid ₹35,000 crore for a Nano car plant. Now, do you see any Nano car around on roads? Did it benefit you?”
A relatively more confident Rahul hit out at the government for its “soft stand” towards corporate groups in the State. “Adani faces protests in Australia, where it bought coal mines. But that will not happen in Gujarat, because the government is working for select few businessmen,” he said at another rally in Chhota Udaipur.
Rahul’s three-day Navsarjan Gujarat rally, which was given a theme of Yuva Rozgaar and Khedut Adhikar Yatra, however, revolved around the tribal belt with a leaning towards ‘soft Hindutva’. The Congress scion visited several temples in the region, which was once a Congress bastion, to strike a connect with the locals, mainly the tribal. In Dahod, Rahul visited the Saint Kabir Temple of the 15th century saint and poet, as well as Bhathiji temple, besides other religious visits.
Even as Rahul’s itinerary included some of the worst 2002 riot-affected places such as Godhra, Limkheda and Dahod, he avoided visiting any mosque in the region; nor did he choose to comment on the recent High Court judgement commuting the death sentence of 11 convicts in the Godhra train burning case.