At a press conference in Ahmedabad, Nirmala Sitharaman attacked the Congress.
Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman flagged off the last leg of the BJP's mega campaign in Gujarat today, in which the party plans to carpet-bomb the state with 26 cabinet ministers, 6 Chief Ministers and a dozen parliamentarians. At a press conference in Ahmedabad, the Defence Minister, who never campaigned in Gujarat, took on the Congress, alleging that the party spoke the "language of separatists", talked of dividing the nation and undermined the army.
"Today, the Congress talks in separatists' voice and enthusiastically joins them. The Congress vice-president supports those misdirected youths of the JNU who talk about break-up of the country," she said.
Without naming former home minister P Chidambaram, the defence minister said a senior Congress leader advocates autonomy for Jammu and Kashmir. "This minister says separatists talk about autonomy and not independence. He gives different definitions of 'azadi'. When he was the home minister (in the UPA government), he said the Army is against peace process," she said.
Another Congress leader, she said, had compared the army chief to "a goon on the street". "The Congress is always ready to break the morale of the Army and reduce the Army's stature," she said. The minister's reference was to Sandeep Dikshit's comment, for which she had earlier demanded an apology from the Congress.
The minister also had a response to Ghulam Nabi Azad's sharp attack in which the Congress leader had alleged that the entire cabinet of Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been converted into a "campaign committee". "Agreed we are ministers, but we are BJP workers too and we need to meet both ends. We can multi-task and work 24x7 and take care of both," Ms Sitharaman said.
Tomorrow Union minister Ravi Shankar Prasad is expected to carry the baton before Sunday's mega programme across the state, in which a dozen union ministers are expected attends rallies and public meetings across the state. Union ministers Rajnath Singh, Arun Jaitley, Nitin Gadkari and Sushma Swaraj are expected to be among the top leaders who would visit the state.
The BJP also plans to launch a mass contact program -- "Chai ke saath" on Sunday, in which BJP workers and leaders will invite the people at each of Gujarat's 50,000 booths to a cup of tea and listen to PM Modi's monthly radio address "Mann Ki Baat".