BJP leaders scrambling for safe seat, so where's Narendra Modi wave: Congress

New Delhi: Congress today sought to puncture BJP's claim of a Narendra Modi wave in Lok Sabha polls saying the opposition party's stalwarts including its PM candidate, Rajnath Singh and Arun Jaitely have turned "jittery" and are running "helter skelter" in search of safe seats.

Party spokesman Randeep Surjewala also dismissed as "hearsay and presumptions" suggestions that several leaders including P Chidambaram, Sachin Pilot and Manish Tewari were not willing to contest and said that the list of candidates is not yet out fully.

"BJP's Prime Ministerial candidate appears to have developed jitters and cold feet. After coming to UP in search of a safe seat and choosing Varanasi, Modi has again gone back to Gujarat looking for another safe seat. The Opposition party's PM candidate is unsure of his success," Surjewala said.

Contending that top leaders of BJP are "running helter skelter", he said that they are trying to outdo each other in looking for safe seats.

"Facing certain defeat at the hands of Congress candidate Raj Babbar in Ghaziabad, BJP President Rajnath Singh is running away to Lucknow. The Leader of Opposition in Rajya Sabha and the principal architect of their political policy Arun Jaitley is also running away from his home state Delhi to Amritsar as he does not have the confidence to contest on any of the seven seats here," he said.

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Surjewala said that similar was the case with senior BJP leader Kalraj Mishra, who is "running away" from Lucknow to Deoria, Uma Bharti from her Parliamentary seat Teekamgarh to Jhansi and Murali Manohar Joshi from Varanasi to Kanpur.

"Where has the BJP's self-professed culture for respect to elders gone. Senior most party leader L K Advani has not been allocated a Parliamentary seat as yet despite the fact that he publicly expressed his desire to contest Lok Sabha polls," he said.

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Accusing Modi and BJP of losing direction and moorings in the "unlimited lust for power", the Congress spokesperson said the first three lists of BJP show that there is a "scramble" in that party.

Expressing Congress' resolve to give a good fight to Modi, he said, "Do not be surprised if Varanasi witnesses a similar spectacle as Ghaziabad from where BJP chief Rajnath Singh ran away after Congress fielded Raj Babbar."

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He said that the Congress candidate against Modi in Varanasi, to be declared "very soon", needed to be supported by all like-minded parties as it alone could carry forward the battle against communalism and divisive forces in a cohesive direction.

Rejecting the contention that senior Congress leaders are shying away from contesting polls, he said "the entire Congress leadership is battle-ready. They are enthusiastic about going to polls and give a government which is youthful."

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He also found "no contradiction" in the remarks of Finance Minister P Chidambaram and Rahul Gandhi about poll prospects of Congress and hit out a section of media saying "a systematic atmosphere is being built by certain friends in media and some persons paid by BJP in social media."

Surjewala said that Congress was declared an underdog in 2004 as also 2009 and both the times it won the polls. "We will get repeated for the third time," he said.

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The Congress spokesperson also attacked "BJP's paid army on social media" for spreading "canards".

Replying to a question, he said that there is no question of Congress' interventions in cases related to Modi but asserted that investigative agencies have to find out the truth.

"The truth about Modi's role in Ishrat Jahan and other cases was known to all but that is now coming out in the form of evidence," Surjewala claimed.