Guwahati, Mar 15 (PTI) The issue of ED and CBI raids against opposition leaders as raised by Congress leader Rahul Gandhi cannot be a factor for the election campaign, Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma said on Friday.
ED and CBI are associated with criminals or probable criminals and the common people are not concerned about it, Sarma said at a press conference here.
”Gandhi is addressing an ecosystem for criminals with which the ED and CBI deal, but this cannot be an election campaign,” he said.
People of the country are concerned with basic issues of getting electricity, houses, water, education and health and not with what is happening to a few criminals, the chief minister said.
”The talk of ED and CBI does not suit his face or character”, he added.
Referring to Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, he said that he was a ‘dishonest politician’ who has played with the media for long and duped people in the name of ‘mohalla clinics’ and schools.
”Kejriwal is not a person as he projects himself to be. He has been boasting of mohalla clinics but in Assam, we have much better hospitals and health facilities,” he said.
The same is the case with his claims about Delhi schools, he asserted saying: ‘When I visited the slums, there were hardly any proper educational facilities.” Referring to the alleged use of a body double by Gandhi during his Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra in Assam, Sarma said that he does not want to talk about it, but the Congress should have issued a press release and clarified ”whether it was a body double or a look-alike”.
He said that a television channel had first asked on January 22 whether Gandhi was using a body double during the Yatra and ”this was a bona fide doubt which should have been addressed by the Congress”.
”The very next day, however, the person was sent to Delhi by flight and he reached Bhopal the next day by train”, the chief minister claimed.
Sarma refused to name the person who he claimed was allegedly Gandhi’s body double but said that he was ”there during the Yatra from January 18 to 22 and he was even seen playing cricket in Majuli”.
Sarma also alleged that Congress’s Deputy leader in Lok Sabha Gaurav Gogoi was “very angry with Gandhi for not getting ticket from Nagaon seat and so he raised the issue of the body double.” The chief minister said that the Lok Sabha elections will be between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Rahul Gandhi and ”it will not take people a minute to decide who they will vote for”.
”There is no doubt that Modi will be the Prime Minister for the third time. The candidates are not a point of consideration as people will see the PM in the face of BJP contestants”, he said.
The PM is the ”main architect of the whole development and transformation that India has undergone during the last ten years. We are mere small actors on the sidelines”, Sarma added.
In Assam, a new way of campaigning will be launched during this election by which ”we will not launch attacks on our opponents but will use politics as a tool of development”, Sarma said.
”BJP will adopt a constructive election campaign by going to the villages and booths and find out who are the people who have not got the benefit of the various government schemes. We will not promise them we will give it to them but we will collect the information”, he said.
A socio-economic and political analysis will be done so that ” we can end discrimination and prepare a solid model for the development and welfare of the people by the assembly elections of 2026”, Sarma said. PTI DG NN
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