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A day after Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi made a strong pitch for a Prime Ministerial role saying he wanted “to repay his debt to the nation”, the Congress chose to hit out at Modi comparing him to the Lord of the Dead Yamraj in Hindu mythology, drawing obvious allusion to the 2002 Godhra riots. Congress said it also, “feared” the fate of the country and the consequences if ever Modi was to be Prime Minister.
Congress spokesperson Rashid Alvi when asked by reporters today if Rahul Gandhi was referring to Narendra Modi in his speech at CII when he said that no one person can come charging on horseback and solve all the country's problems; “Had he ( Gandhi) intended to indicate Narendra Modi he would not have referred to somebody riding a horse but somebody riding a buffalo (Lord Yama's vehicle)....Rahulji has talked about somebody coming on a horse, he must be referring to a messiah.”
The last time the Congress had drawn allusions to Modi being the “maut ka saudagar” (merchant of death) in reference to his alleged role in the 2002 riots it had boomeranged on the party in the 2007 polls and thereafter it chose to refrain from making such allusions.
Alvi ridiculing Modi's comments about "having repaid his debt to Gujarat and now needed to repay his the debt" to the nation said, “ Nobody needs to step out of his state to repay their debt to their motherland. Moreover, we are frightened if he wants to pay back the debt to Delhi (nation) in the same manner in which he has paid the debt to the soil of Gujarat.”
I & B minister Manish Tewari earlier in the day too said, “As someone who believes in the idea of India, who believes in the plurality of Indian ethos, who is committed to the founding values of the Indian Constitution, I often worry about the statements of the Gujarat Chief Minister. I hope he doesn't want to do in the rest of India what he did in Gujarat in 2002.”
