BJP Says Leaders Leaving Congress As They Have No Faith In Rahul Gandhi

New Delhi: Hitting back, BJP today targeted Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi for his "silence" on the party's 15-year rule in Assam during his campaign in the poll-bound state and said leaders are leaving the party because they had no "faith" in his leadership.

It also raked up the issue of infiltration, a major poll plank of the party's alliance in the state, to attack Congress, saying its "affection" was not for Assamese people but infiltrators whom the Tarun Gogoi government had "cultivated" as a "vote bank".

Mr Gandhi, in his public meeting, had hit out at BJP over its government's alleged failures and for encouragement to violence wherever it was in power, including Haryana, while claiming that RSS wanted to "impose" its ideology in the country.

"Rahul Gandhi has been levelling baseless allegations against Prime Minister Narendra Modi and BJP for long and he is keeping up with this tradition. People wanted him to speak about what his government has done in the last 15 years but he disappointed them.

"There is an increasing frustration with Congress and it has reached a stage where party leaders are leaving as they have no faith in his leadership," BJP national secretary Shrikant Sharma told a press conference.

In Assam, people want to get rid of Congress' 15-year rule of "corruption and mal-governance", he said, claiming that over 32,000 factories were closed in the state during this period.

Countering Mr Gandhi's dig at the government, Mr Sharma said he and Congress president Sonia Gandhi were out on bail in a case of corruption, a reference to the National Herald case.

He also referred to industrialist Vijay Mallya, who has been accused of wilfully defaulting on bank loans and has left India, as a "baby" of Congress, alleging that he was given Rs 3,100 crore bail-out by the then Manmohan Singh government. "Congress should explain how much commission it received."

"Our government will recover all the dues including those owed by Congress," he said.