Panaji:
Narendra Modi today accused Home Minister Sushil Kumar Shinde of playing vote bank politics. The Gujarat chief minister and BJP's prime ministerial candidate was speaking at a rally in Goa.
Launching a scathing attack in his 45-minute speech in Panaji, Mr Modi said, "The Home Minister is writing to chief minsters to ensure that members of a particular community are not arrested. On the basis of religion, injustice should not be done to anybody. If one is innocent he or she must be free but this must be uniformly applied."
As the lakh strong crowd roared in approval, Mr Modi offered this piece of advice for Mr Shinde: "Law and order is a state subject. Sitting in Delhi do not tutor states on law and order. This is against federal structure."
In a letter that has generated a lot of controversy, Home Minister Sushil Kumar Shinde on Friday asked all state chief ministers to be "careful" while arresting minorities. The home minister wrote to state chief ministers on detention procedures, asking them to form a panel to review cases of people jailed without trial. "Release minority youths if they are illegally detained," Mr Shinde had written.
Calling the Congress shameless for "defending corruption", Mr Modi said the Manmohan Singh government had destroyed established institutions and was hurting the federal structure of the country. "People want a Congress-free India. The past 10 years (under the Congress-led UPA) have been the worst the country has seen," he said.