File photo: Narendra Modi addresses crowd at youth conclave in Hyderabad
"Fake, hollow, shallow" is what Narendra Modi is all about, Congress today said, hitting back at the Gujarat Chief Minister for his attack on UPA and reeled out statistics to rubbish his claims on development.
"Modi is all rhetoric, lies and more lies. Making false claims and doling out fake promises. That is what Modi is all about. Fake, hollow, shallow. Empty vessels make most noise. No wonder Modi desperately tried to make so much, in his usual hollow rhetorical style in Hyderabad," former CLP leader of Gujarat Shaktisinh Gohil told reporters at AICC in New Delhi.
The Gujarat Congress leader said that while the Chief Minister "brags" being "development personified", his own government's reports and statistics depict a completely different picture than what he claims.
He said the latest economic data shows the poor have not benefited from Mr Modi's development.
"The data shows that distribution of benefits of high growth have not been uniform across different strata of society. In Gujarat only the rich gets richer...Middle class and poor people have not benefited anything from Modi's so-called development model for whose propaganda he has hired American firms and spent billions of tax money," Mr Gohil said.
The Congress leader said even Odisha, which has a much lower revenue base than Gujarat, has been able to reduce poverty by about 20 percentage points between 2004-05 and 2009-10 as compared to just 8.6 per cent, Gujarat could do.
"Planning Commission data also shows poverty reduction for the deprived, especially scheduled tribes and Muslims in Gujarat has been among the lowest in the country," he said.
Raking up the issue of Gujarat riots and in particular the Ishrat Jahan case without naming it, Mr Gohil said in a press note: "Modi's sins created conducive atmosphere for terrorists in Gujarat. In fact, Modi government can kill innocent people."
Targeting Mr Modi over issues of corruption and internal security, he said, "In its report, CAG has criticised Gujarat government for bad management and corruption in internal security."