Ahmedabad:
Sonia Gandhi has landed in Narendra Modi's Gujarat and will soon kick off the Congress' election campaign in the state with a rally in Rajkot.
Mrs Gandhi's visit comes amid much political heat generated by Mr Modi's dare that the Congress-led UPA government must detail expenditure on her foreign travel. It is also the first time Mrs Gandhi will address a public gathering after the UPA government set off on its "reforms-are-back" agenda in the face of much political opposition and she is expected to launch a strong defence of the government's policies.
Rajkot, in the Saurashtra region, is BJP territory, but the Congress hopes to exploit the fact that it is in this Patel stronghold that BJP rebel Keshubhai Patel has begun his rival political party. A Sonia Gandhi election rally is also of much interest as five years ago, while campaigning in Gujarat, she had called Mr Modi "a trader of death (
Maut ka Saudagar)." That, many political analysts say, may have swung the elections in favour of Mr Modi, who, they say, used it to his political advantage. That time Mr Modi had raked up the issue of Mrs Gandhi's foreign origin. In the 2007 elections, he came strongly back to power winning 117 of the 182 seats in the Gujarat Assembly; the Congress won just 59 seats.
This time, just before Mrs Gandhi's scheduled visit, Mr Modi has accused the Manmohan Singh government of spending crores of public money on her foreign travel. All eyes are now on the Rajkot rally to see if Mrs Gandhi will at all retaliate. Elaborate security arrangements are in place for the Congress President's visit, with a team from the Special Protection Group conducting security checks at the places that the she is visiting. 1,000 policemen have been deployed at the Race Course Road rally venue. Before addressing the rally she visited a Ramakrishna ashram.
Mr Modi claimed on Monday that the Manmohan Singh government had spent nearly 1900 crores on Mrs Gandhi's foreign trips abroad in the last three years. When that claim rang hollow with an RTI activist said to have gleaned that information denying it, Mr Modi tweaked his attack and asked the Congress why it had not shared details of her trips despite the activist's application for that information.
Mr Modi said he had based Monday's claim on information in a local newspaper. That newspaper's editor, on Tuesday, said his information was based on "local wires" or news agencies, but was not able to share more information. The story he ran said that RTI activist Ramesh Verma of Haryana had unearthed the details of the expenses. Except that the activist says that's not true - he says that two years ago, he asked the government to share how much has been spent on Mrs Gandhi's foreign trips in the last 10 years and is yet to receive a response, even though the Chief Information Commissioner (CIC) had directed the Prime Minister's Office to reply to him. Neither the government nor the Congress was able to explain why. When Mr Verma issued his first denial on Monday, Mr Modi was forced to announce that he will publicly apologise if his allegation was proven untrue.
Now, another RTI activist Trupti Shah has come forward and said she had filed an RTI appeal five years ago to know how much was spent on Mr Modi's travel in 2007, just before assembly elections, to " 27 places by helicopter but there is no mention of this in the Government expenses." Ms Shah, who says she is yet to get a reply from the CM's office to her repeated queries, had also written in July to Mr Modi, who she says had travelled to attend seminars and conferences on women's empowerment at the time. Ms Shah said she had also written to the Gujarat Information Commissioner, but was yet to get the details she had sought. "I had asked under the RTI Act for the expenses of the Women's Empowerment Seminar that in the name of women empowerment, why are they having this seminar? But the Chief Minister's office has not replied to any of my queries regarding the expenses," she said.
Gujarat Government spokesman Jaynarayan Vyas would only say on Wednesday morning that Ms Shah had all right to seek and get that information and that she had recourse to legal methods to obtain it.
Adding a new confused dimension to the Sonia-Modi controversy, both the BJP and the Congress keep referring to the expenses on Mrs Gandhi's trips abroad for medical treatment. That's not what the RTI activist asked for. "We also give good wishes for the health of Sonia Gandhi, but if expenses were paid from the public treasury, please clarify," Nirmala Sitharaman, BJP spokesperson, said.
Congress leader Digvijaya Singh retaliated. "As far as Soniaji's trips are concerned, everyone knows about her health issues. His (Modi) comments are reflective of his own character and his party." He added that Mr Modi has been well-trained by his party's parent body, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), in "the Nazi tradition of spreading false propaganda."
"Sangh trains it's cadre in disinformation campaign. Obviously Modi has been trained well! Sangh has modelled itself in the Nazi tradition," Mr Singh said on micro-blogging site Twitter.