Sasaram/Arwal (Bihar): Union Home Minister Amit Shah on Sunday charged the INDIA bloc with trying to build a “corridor for infiltrators”, unlike Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who wanted to “set up an industrial corridor”.
Addressing back-to-back rallies in Sasaram and Arwal towns of Bihar, on the final day of campaign for the second and final phase of assembly elections, Shah also promised a future that “mortar shells that will be dropped on Pakistan will be manufactured at an ordnance factory in this state”.
“Recently, Rahul and Lalu’s son (Tejashwi Yadav) took out a ‘Voter Adhikar Yatra’. It was not aimed at bringing about any improvement in the lives of the poor living in Bihar, the Dalits and the EBCs. It was aimed at protecting infiltrators,” Shah alleged.
The former BJP president said that “the opposition’s vote bank politics has led them to make attempts for building a ghuspaithiya (infiltrator) corridor, unlike Narendra Modi, who is setting up an industrial corridor”.
Shah also bristled at Gandhi’s charge that votes were being stolen in the country, and asked, “If he thinks there is ‘vote chori’, why does he not lodge a formal complaint with the Election Commission?”.
“When the government at the Centre was helmed by Manmohan Singh, Sonia Gandhi and Lalu, terrorists struck at will on our soil. In contrast, now we are beating up the terrorists inside their homes,” Shah asserted.
“In future, if terrorists from Pakistan dare to carry out an attack again, bullets fired by them will be retaliated with mortar shells. Do you know where these mortar shells will be manufactured? In Bihar, in Sasaram, as Modi is trying to build a defence corridor here,” said the home minister.
The BJP leader also lambasted the Congress and the RJD for “having tried to stall” the construction of the Ram temple at Ayodhya, where an ancient Hindu shrine was allegedly razed by “Mughal emperor Babur 550 years ago”.
“Today, with Modi in power, a sky-high temple has been built at the spot,” Shah said.
The former BJP president said, “I can tell you, in advance, the outcome of the ongoing elections. This is my 37th rally in the state, and I can say that Lalu ji and his allies are going to be wiped out in the first phase itself.”
He urged all the people to “be on guard and not get complacent”.
“You must remember that the opposition may have come in a new garb, but their poll symbols remain the same lantern and ‘panjaa’ (hand) and so does their character,” Shah alleged.
Referring to the CPI(ML) Liberation, which has aligned with the INDIA bloc, the home minister said, “Under Modi’s leadership, we have been able to weed out the menace of naxalism. But if even a little chance is given to these red flag wallahs, the state will again be in throes of the Left insurgency that Bihar had suffered in the past”.
“Press the EVM button, in favour of NDA candidates, with such force that it sends shock waves as far as Italy”, added the BJP leader, in a tongue-in-cheek reference to Gandhi’s maternal roots in the European country.
He also drew a contrast between Prasad, who has been convicted in fodder scam cases and named in many other corruption scandals, and Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, the JD(U president and NDA ally, who had “no taint of corruption despite being in power for 20 years”.
