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The Congress has promised interest-free loans to farmers in Himachal Pradesh. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), on its part, has made fighting corruption and strengthening law and order its main poll planks for the Assembly elections.
The state votes on November 9.
On Thursday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi addressed a public rally in Kangra. He said it was ironical that Chief Minister Virbhadra Singh faced graft charges but the Congress manifesto has promised zero tolerance on corruption.
The PM didn’t address the issues of demonetisation and the goods and services tax (GST), which have reportedly hit traders and orchard owners in Himachal Pradesh. Modi said the state has been wrecked by “five demons” — the mining mafia, forest mafia, drug mafia, tender mafia and transfer mafia.
Later, Congress spokesperson Randeep Singh Surjewala said the PM’s promises were empty slogans. The Centre has failed to deliver on any of the promises that Modi had made to the people of the state in the run-up to the Lok Sabha elections in 2014, he said.
The Congress leader said Modi had at a public rally in the state in April 2014 promised that a BJP government at the Centre would slap import duty on apples to protect domestic growers. “But three lakh (300,000) tonnes of apples have been imported from the US and New Zealand.”
Surjewala said the Centre has starved the state of funds in the past three years. He said the PM had launched the UDAN scheme with the inauguration of the Delhi-Shimla flight on April 27, where he had claimed the cost of an air ticket would be as low as Rs 2,036. “It is currently more than Rs 15,000,” Surjewala said. The Congress has also highlighted the impact of GST and demonetisation and the excessive tax rates on things of daily consumption. “Modiji is all about bhashan (speeches) but no shasan (governance),” the Congress spokesperson said in Shimla.
“I feel the Congress has become a laughing club. The chief minister is himself out on bail... And he (Virbhadra Singh) is out on bail on what charges? That of corruption. He is facing serious allegations,” Modi said.
He asked the crowd whether it could digest the fact that such a chief minister had released the Congress manifesto promising to combat corruption. Even a small child from Himachal would not fall for it, he declared.
Targeting Rahul Gandhi for meeting the Chinese ambassador during the stand-off in Doklam earlier this year, Modi said, “The leader whose father, grandmother and father of the grandmother were PMs of India, and who has been born and brought up in the ruling family, is acting in an insulting way. Isn’t it insulting when these people hold talks with Chinese leaders on Doklam instead of asking the elected government?”
The Prime Minister also brought up India’s first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru with a reference to the Jan Sangh, which he said was created to counter the Congress through the efforts of leaders like Shanta Kumar, a former chief minister of the state and a BJP candidate from the area.
“Pandit Nehru... said they’d uproot and throw away the Jan Sangh during its early years,” Modi said.
He said it was not the Congress of Mahatma Gandhi or of freedom fighters but a party of graft and dynasty politics.
