Narendra Modi government's rebuttal to Arvind Kejriwal's allegations

Gandhinagar: Narendra Modi's Gujarat government has issued a point-by-point rebuttal of Arvind Kejriwal's allegations that the BJP's prime ministerial candidate has oversold development in the state he governs in his attempt to make a pitch for the country's top job.

This is the first time that Mr Modi's government has responded to Mr Kejriwal's repeated charge that development on ground in Gujarat does not match up to the claims the chief minister has made. The rebuttal comes a day after Mr Kejriwal, who heads the Aam Aadmi Party, announced in Varanasi that he would contest the general elections against Mr Modi in the Uttar Pradesh temple town. ('Yes, I will contest against Narendra Modi,' Arvind Kejriwal tells Varanasi)

Mr Kejriwal prefaced his announcement with an elaborate critique of Mr Modi's governance in Gujarat. Here is the Modi government's rebuttal in a press release issued this morning:

1) The AAP chief alleged that land was being forcibly taken away from farmers in Gujarat to be given to corporates.

Mr Modi's government has rubbished this as "false propaganda" by the Aam Aadmi Party. It said, "The government's land acquisition policy has come in for praise from even the Supreme Court. There has been no forcible or unfair acquisition of any farmer's land and the compensation given to the farmers is based on current market prices." It stressed that "the acquisition policy of the state government is fair, just and transparent."

2) Mr Kejriwal alleged at the Varanasi rally that over 5,000 farmers have committed suicide in Gujarat over crop failure in the last 10 years.

The Modi government said, "This is a blatant lie. During his visit to Gujarat, Kejriwal had claimed that 800 farmers had committed suicide in the last 10 years and now at the Varanasi rally, the figure has gone to over 5,000. This shows the blatant falsehood... The fact is only one farmer has committed suicide due to crop failure in the last 10 years."

3) Arvind Kejriwal said at his Varanasi rally that if the BJP comes to power, small kirana shops will have to shut down because of the party's policy of Foreign Direct Investment in retail.

The Gujarat government said, "It's the BJP's stated policy... that the party is against FDI in retail."

4) Mr Kejriwal alleged that 60,000 small-scale units have shut down in Gujarat.

Mr Modi's government has retorted, "Of the 5.1 lakh small and medium units, over 95 per cent are working with efficient capacity."

Earlier this month, Mr Kejriwal had conducted a controversial tour of Gujarat, saying he wanted to audit the development that the BJP routinely invokes to illustrate Mr Modi's competence in his four terms as chief minister.

Unsurprisingly, the AAP chief said the claims didn't check out and that the super-state that Mr Modi claims to have created exists only for the wealthy and industrialists. He reiterated that yesterday.