High Octane Campaign for Haryana Concludes
BJP and RSS spread hate...We have to eradicate hate...The fight is between love and hate...The small parties who are contesting elections in Haryana are the A, B, C, and D teams of Haryana. Vote for the Congress party and remove the BJP from power, he said
NEW DELHI: The highly charged campaign for Haryana ended on Thursday with Prime Minister Narendra Modi calling the Congress "guarantee of corruption" and urging the voters to bring the BJP back to power for the third consecutive term. Leading the charge for the Congress, Rahul Gandhi held two rallies in the poll-bound state where he attacked the BJP for "spreading hate" and appealed to Haryana to oust the incumbent.
Targeting the Congress before the end of the campaign, Mr Modi, in a series of posts on X in Hindi, said that the voice that Haryana is echoing with the "Bhadosa dil se, Bhajpa phir se (BJP once more)" slogan.
Mr Modi blasted the Congress for its alleged divisive and negative politics, which, he said, the patriotic people of the state will never accept.
“The Congress means a syndicate of fixers and son-in-law," he said in an apparent reference to controversial land deals involving Congress leader Sonia Gandhi's son-in-law Robert Vadra when the party was in power during 2004-14 with Bhupinder Singh Hooda as the chief minister.
The main goal of father-son politics is only self-interest, he said, targeting Mr Hooda and his MP son Deepender Hooda.
The Prime Minister further asserted that Congress leaders are involved in a factional fight. People know that the party can never provide a stable government. “People of Haryana are also feeling hurt as the entire state is being insulted at the behest of two families sitting in Delhi and Haryana,” he posted.
Leaders of the Congress, Mr Modi said, have bared their intentions by speaking in favour of ending reservation when Dalits and backward classes are already angry with the party for its inability to prevent caste violence.
Earlier in the day, Mr Gandhi addressed Congress rallies in Nuh and Mahendragarh, where he said that the battle for Haryana is a fight between "mohabbat (love)" and "nafrat (hatred)". The Congress spreads love while the BJP spreads hatred.
“The most important thing is brotherhood. Wherever the BJP and the RSS people go, they spread hatred. In whichever state they go, somewhere they talk about language, somewhere they talk about religion and somewhere they speak about caste. This hatred has to be ended. India is not a country of hatred. It is the land of mohabbat... It is the country of mohabbat ki dukan, not nafrat ka bazaar,” said Mr Gandhi.
The Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha said hatred will only weaken the country and spread sorrow and fear. Holding a copy of the Constitution, he said it has protected the rights of the poor, farmers and labourers, but “the BJP and the RSS are hell-bent on attacking the Constitution”.
The Congress leader also hit out at Mr Modi over various issues, including unemployment, and said the Prime Minister keeps making claims about development, but he cannot make people understand how he took Haryana to the "top position in terms of unemployment".
As Mr Gandhi was winding up his speech in Mahendragarh, former MP Ashok Tanwar, who had joined the BJP in January this year, joined him on stage and it was announced that "aaj unki ghar wapasi ho gayi hai (today, he has returned to the Congress fold)".
The Dalit leader described his decision to return to the Congress as the "will of God". Sources said Mr Tanwar was in touch with a senior Congress leader in Delhi and his return to the party materialised just a day ago.
Hours before joining the Congress, the 48-year-old former Sirsa MP was campaigning for the BJP candidate in Safidon Assembly constituency and exhorting voters to bring it back to power for a third time.