Ahmedabad: Campaigning is underway in full swing in poll-bound Gujarat with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the Congress and the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) going all out to woo voters. The ruling BJP has plunged into the campaign with its big guns, including Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Union Home minister Amit Shah, party president J.P. Nadda and Chief Minister Bhupendra Patel holding back-to-back rallies and roadshows across the state.
Attacking the Congress, Shah said during a public meeting in Ahmedabad Friday: “Congress is talking about peace, does it suit them? For years, they ruled Gujarat and communal riots were rampant. The BJP, after coming to power in the state, gave such governance that communal riots stopped completely…. In 2002, they tried to incite it again, but BJP took such action that till 2022 no communal riots have taken place in the state and not a single day of curfew has been imposed.”
On Saturday, the BJP released its manifesto for the Gujarat elections in the presence of CM Patel, Nadda and state BJP chief C.R. Paatil. In it, the BJP promised 20 lakh jobs, implementation of the Uniform Civil Code (UCC), one lakh government jobs for women, Rs 10,000 crore for agri-marketing infra, and scooters for students.
Speaking at the launch event, Nadda said: “For the progress of Gujarat, we will make Gujarat’s economy equal to that of a 1 trillion economy by making the state a foreign direct investment destination. We will create an anti-radicalization cell to identify and eliminate potential threats, and sleeper cells of terrorist organizations and anti-India forces”.
Later in the day, CM Bhupendra Patel held a 16 kilometre-long roadshow from Subhash chowk to Bodakdev in Ahmedabad.
ThePrint’s national photo editor Praveen Jain, who is in Gujarat covering the 2022 assembly elections, brings you exclusive pictures of the BJP’s campaign.
