Porbandar
BJP national president Amit Shah today raked up Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi’s Italian lineage, saying it was not possible for him to see development in Gujarat through his “Italian spectacles”, an insinuation made by Prime Minister Narendra Modi before the 2014 parliamentary elections to hit out at the Congress.

Flagging off the second leg of the “Gujarat Gaurav Yatra” here on Mahatma Gandhi’s birth anniversary, Shah targeted Rahul and the Congress for questioning the grounds for the BJP’s “Gaurav Yatra”.

After Shah flagged off the first leg of the yatra from Karamsad — the birthplace of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel — yesterday, state Congress chief Bharatsinh Solanki had asked the BJP what it was proud of in Gujarat.

“We are proud of what the BJP governments have made Gujarat in the past two decades from what it was when the Congress was in power in the state,” Shah said.

“We are also proud of the great sons of the soil that Gujarat have presented to the country, Mahatma Gandhi, Sardar Patel, Morarji Desai and now Narendra Modi,” Shah said. “We take pride for a developed, peaceful and curfew-free Gujarat. The BJP takes pride for making Gujarat drought-free by bringing Narmada waters to its parched lands.”

He reminded the Congress leaders’ about the party’s dismal show in the Assembly elections in states like Maharashtra, Haryana, Jharkhand, Jammu and Kashmir, Assam, Manipur, Uttarakhand and Uttar Pradesh held after Modi became the PM and again took a dig at Rahul’s recent foreign excursions.

“The Congress was day-dreaming of winning in Gujarat, but the elections cannot be won by spending vacations in America but need to work hard on ground zero,” he said.