Drawing the battlelines for the Lok Sabha polls in Gujarat, he attacked Modi for having colleagues who went to jail before becoming ministers. He was in Bardoli to address a public rally at the culmination of the Vikas Khoj Yatra of the Congress that had moved through 10 districts of the state.
The scion of the Gandhi family tried to make up for the 'tea vendor' barb by senior party colleague Mani Shankar Aiyar recently. He said, "People who make tea should be respected and so should the farmers along with others who work in different ways. But those who make fool of others should not be respected."
He attacked the BJP for trying to usurp the legacy of Sardar Patel saying, "They don't know what Sardar Patel said about RSS. I would like to tell you that Sardar Patel said that RSS has a poisonous ideology and it will destroy the soul of India."
Attacking Modi without naming him, Rahul said, "You have been in the RSS all your life... Who killed Mahatma? It was the RSS ideology which killed him. After his death, Sardar Patel had proposed to ban the RSS. What Patel and Mahatma said you do not have any understanding of it, nor have you read them."
He countered Modi's claims on development in Gujarat and the BJP's campaign on corruption. "The Congress gave RTI and Lokpal but they stopped Lokayukta in Gujarat. I requested personally to the opposition in Parliament to pass six bills against corruption but they are not cooperating," he told the people who had come from the tribal areas of South Gujarat known to have a considerable Congress support base.
On the issue of farmers, he said that representatives of 40,000 Sikh farmers approached him saying that the Gujarat government wanted to push them out of the state. He also claimed that 6,000 farmers had committed suicide in Gujarat.
On Gujarat government pegging Rs 11 as the limit for defining the poverty line, he said, "We have always worked for removing poverty but they believe in removing the poor."
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