Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi took on the Congress in Kolkata on Wednesday, saying that President Pranab Mukherjee should have been made the Prime Minister after Indira Gandhi's death in 1984.
"Pranab Da should have become the PM after Indira Gandhi's death. In 2004, he was the senior most. He should have been made the PM, not Manmohan," Modi said amid chants of 'Modi, Modi' at the historic Brigade Parade Grounds in Kolkata.
Modi also hit out at West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, saying that she had failed to bring about the change (poribortan) she had promised.
Lashing out at the Third Front leaders, Modi said, "Western states in India have developed more than the eastern states because no Third Front leader has ever ruled a western province."
Hitting out at the Left leaders' constant secular chant, Modi said they have never done anything for minorities.
Modi said that Gujarat had the Hajj travellers' quota of 4,500 while there were more than 37,000 applications. On the contrary, he said, West Bengal had only 12,000 applications against a quota of 11,600. He said the high number of applications show the prosperity of minorities in Gujarat.
Rolling out his own definition of secularism, Modi said, "For a government, secularism means nation first."
Give us all 42 seats
Modi appealed to the voters to indulge in some experimentation for 2014. "People should send all 42 BJP candidates to the Lok Sabha from here and fix accountability for each of our actions. At the same time, people should also fix accountability of the state government for the change Banerjee promised," he said.
The Gujarat chief minister said the Third Front leaders in Delhi should hire a chopper to see the crowd here and realise the ground reality.
Modi said that all political calculations are going to fail in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls. "This is the first Indian polls since Independence where people not political parties are contesting elections. People have set the agenda for the polls this time." Modi said people are deprived of even basic amenities after 65 years of Independence.
Why does Bengal suffer?
Listing out his vision for eradicating poverty, Modi said, "Vikas bhi, imaan bhi, garibon ka samman bhi (Development, honesty and respect for the poor)."
Tracing ties of Bengal and Gujarat, Modi said many prominent Bengalis stayed in Gujarat for many years and contributed immensely to building the state. He lauded West Bengal as being the country's teacher in many aspects and said if India were to become a world leader, Bengal had to get back its former glory.
Referring to Jan Sangh co-founder Syama Prasad Mookerjee, Modi said the BJP was his brainchild which now occupies the mind of every Indian.
Blaming the 35 years of Left rule for lack of development in the state, Modi said the so-called party of workers and labourers did not change the plight of them either. Modi said it was his party's vision to recognise labour as investment and give the worker his right to dignity.
Also read: What Modi can achieve in Mamata's Bengal
Projecting Gujarat as the role model of development, Modi said, "If Gujarat could have 24x7 supply of electricity, why is Bengal deprived of this?" He added that this was because no new power plants were set up in the state.
Lamenting the poor state of education in the state, Modi said, "Only 60 per cent of schools in West Bengal have toilets for girl students while many schools are not even electrified. How would kids learn computers then?"
Modi concluded his speech in a typical Bengali way by making crowds roar "cholbe na" to his vows of uprooting misrule from the state.
Rajnath bares love for Bengal
BJP chief Rajnath Singh showered lavish praise on prominent Bengalis including Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, Swami Vivekananda, Rabindranath Tagore, Bankim Chandra Chatterjee, etc. Tracing the party's long ties with the state, Singh recounted and praised Jan Sangh co-founder Syama Prasad Mookerjee's contribution to the country.
Taking on the state's Left politics, Singh said the party destroyed the state's flourishing economy in its 35-year-old rule. The BJP chief said that if the Left's long rule could be credited for having started any industry, it should be the crime industry.
Congratulating the people of Bengal for uprooting the Left from the state, Singh took on the Mamata Banerjee-led Trinamool Congress rule in the state, saying that she has yet not brought in the change she had promised. He did not say anything else against Banerjee.
Clearing the air on the 2002 Gujarat riots, Singh said the state did not witness any other riot since then and Modi should be credited for this. He said minorities in Gujarat had the highest per capita income in the entire country.
Magician PC Sircar and music director and singer Bappi Lahiri were also on the dais with him.
When Shahnawaz took on TMC
BJP leader Shahnawaz Hussain, who addressed the gathering before Modi, blamed the Congress for the frequent disruption in Parliament. "They say that we are not allowing Parliament to function, but the reality is that we have opened the veil of Congress."
Clearing the air about his party being labelled communal by rivals, Hussain said, "Congress is betraying the people but we want to fight on the issue of corruption and development. We will not divide our country into Hindu and Muslims. People have started believing that he (Modi) will harm Muslims but this is only a fear of the people."
Hitting out at Mamata Banerjee, he said, "TMC is close to Congress and they are like the same water in a different glass."
Hoping that people in West Bengal will vote for Modi in hordes, Hussain said, "We are at one seat now, but will soon be voted to power by people of Bengal. We are fighting for saving the nation."
How party prepared ground
The BJP had been using novel ways to drum up support for Modi's Jan Chetna Sabha rally in Kolkata. These included hosting regular road shows, party workers and supporters organising runs and walks sporting Modi masks and online sale of seats at the rally.
In keeping with Modi's humble 'tea vendor' appeal which he has highlighted all across his rallies in different parts of the country, nearly 100 'NaMo tea stalls' were put up across the state.
But tea is nothing compared to sweets when it comes to moving Babu Moshais. BJP workers had been distributing specially made 'NaMo sweets' in the state.
Where BJP stands in Bengal
The BJP's past record in the 42 Lok Sabha seats in Bengal has been bleak. The party bagged a solitary seat here in 1998 and doubled its tally in the next elections in 1999. However, in the last elections in 2009, the party managed only the Darjeeling constituency when senior BJP leader Jaswant Singh -- backed by the Gorkha Janmukti Morcha which holds sway in the region -- came up trumps.
The BJP and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) have traditionally never been able to make much of an impact in West Bengal, though the party's former avatar Jan Sangh was co-founded by the son of the soil, Syama Prasad Mookerjee.
But the 2014 poll brings new hope for the Modi-led party. The party has witnessed more than a two-fold increase in the membership of the BJP's state unit.
A local leader of the party claimed the total membership has increased from three lakh in 2011 to more than seven lakh in 2013. Two lakh new members have enrolled in the last six months, which party leaders have attributed to Modi's anointment as the prime ministerial candidate.
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