Rajkot
Continuing his tirade against Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his ruling BJP, the Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi on the second day of his first phase of election campaign in Gujarat attempted to woo the Patels and the farmers and targeted Vijay Rupani as a “remote controlled chief minister” in his home town of Rajkot.

Beginning the second day from Jamnagar where he spend the night after the first day’s campaign yesterday which started from the famous temple town of Dwarka, Rahul ended the day at Rajkot holding meetings, mixing with the people and at several places ignored the security cordon to shake hands with the people.

In Rajkot, the home town of the Chief Minister, he also held a “road show” passing through several important thoroughfares to reach the public meeting venue. Rahul’s terming the Vijay Rupani government as a remote-controlled one, evoked sharp reaction from the CM who drew the example of the UPA government and said everyone in the country knew that though Manmohan Singh was the PM, “the remote control of the government was in the hands of Sonia Gandhi.”

In the Patel-dominated Tankara town near Rajkot, Rahul wore the symbolic cap of the “Patidar Anamat Andolan Samiti” with the inscriptions “Jai Patidar, Jai Sardar,” while in the farmer-dominated areas, he evoked the spirit of cooperatives like the Amul that have made significant contributions in the farm economy in the state.

The Congress vice-president candidly admitted his party’s “weakness” vis-à-vis the strong points of the BJP and Modi which caused the defeat of the Congress-led UPA government. “The Congress government works a lot, take important decisions and implement, but we do not know the marketing strategy. This is our weakness and we must learn to market our works,” Rahul said. In contrast, he said, Modi only knew “marketing well” through which he could impress the people “claiming others’ works as his own.”

At most of the meetings and exchanges with the people, he confined his address as “Congress versus BJP” enumerating the strong and weak points of the two parties. “Modi only can give good ‘bhashan’ (speeches), does good marketing but very little work,” he said. The Congress, in contrast, is “good at work but poor at marketing,” he said.