“I heard the PM’s statement (about Rajesh Pilot being briefly sidelined by Congress for standing up to the Gandhi family). What he said is far from the truth… Also, no one should be worried about my present or my future. I am confident that my party and the people will take good care of me,” Pilot said.
As Modi was wrapping up BJP’s campaign for Saturday’s vote in Rajsamand by again alluding to Pilot’s “plight”, Gehlot said at a presser in Jaipur that the PM’s remarks were intended to provoke the Gujjar community.
PM dubs CM Ashok Gehlot as ‘Jadugar’, accuses congress of turning Rajasthan into a hub for corruption
“It was during BJP’s stint in the state that 72 Gujjars died in firing while agitating for reservation. There have been agitations during Congress’s term, too, but we haven’t even resorted to a baton charge,” the CM said.
At Deogarh in Rajsamand, Modi said Congress showed the door to “a Gujjar leader trying to make his career by working hard for the party” just like “picking a fly out of milk”.
On Gehlot, the PM said he wished the people of the state would make him pay the price for his outrageous insinuation that many rape complaints registered in the state were false.
“Does any woman agree with Gehlot? Do women in Rajasthan go to police stations and make false cases? Does any woman want her character to be questioned,” the PM asked the crowd, eliciting a chorus of “nahi (no)”.
“Will you not punish on November 25 those who make such remarks about women? I want you all to go to every house to tell them what Gehlot and his minister (Shanti Dhariwal) said for our mothers and sisters.”
Modi was referring to Gehlot’s statement in September 2022 about 50% of criminal cases filed by women being found to be “fake”.
As he did elsewhere on the campaign trail, the PM accused Congress of “putting the courage, valour and bravery of the armed forces to shame” and trying to weaken them.
“Independent India’s first (defence) scam involved a deal by Congress to purchase arms for the armed forces. The Bofors, submarine and helicopter scams are testimony to the same. Had Congress not been ousted, our Tejas fighter planes would not have taken off. They tried to bring our Tejas down and get a plane from outside to get their cut,” Modi said.
Union home minister Amit Shah kept the digs coming, telling reporters in Jaipur that Gehlot was “a magician who made employment, basic amenities and law & order vanish” in five years. “Now, voters have made up their minds to make magician Gehlot vanish on December 3 (result day).”
Shah said Congress’s vituperative campaign against PM Modi wasn’t a new thing. “Whenever Congress uses inappropriate words for PM Modi, it backfires on them. I am confident the people of Rajasthan will respond to the derogatory language directed at PM Modi on election day.”
Gehlot’s parting shot on the final day of the campaign was to call this election one between “a son of the soil” and “guests from outside”.
“In 2017, Modiji used to say in the Gujarat elections that ‘this Marwari Ashok Gehlot has come to defeat me. I am your son; if you do not vote for me, then where will I go?’ I am appealing the same to you.”
The Congress veteran said that the “lingering pain of failing to topple the government in Rajasthan by horse-trading” was making the BJP leadership “say all sorts of things”. He predicted that after the polls, “they will not show their faces for the next five years”.