Mumbai: Addressing his first public rally after becoming the BJP’s campaign chief, Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi on Sunday accused the Congress of hiding behind a veil of secularism to cover its failures.
Modi said that the solution to all problems in the country is to set it “free from the Congress”. The leader was speaking at Fergusson College in Pune. “The dynastic politics followed by the Congress in the last 60 years has completely crushed the hopes and aspirations of the common man. The Congress has taken the people of this country for granted. They feel that all they have to do is win elections by appeasing one or the other section of society,” he said.
He also questioned how the rupee kept falling when the Prime Minister of the country was an economist. He said that currencies of countries like Pakistan, Nepal and Sri Lanka were not affected like that of India’s. “Unless we free this country from the Congress, there won’t be any solution to our problems,” he said.
Facing criticism from his opponents for defending his government over the 2002 Gujarat riots, Modi said, “Whenever the Congress is faced with a challenge – whether it is corruption, price rise, directives from the Supreme Court, or a minister being jailed, or the rape of girls or an atmosphere of insecurity – they do not answer people. The moment there is a crisis, they wear a burqa (veil)of secularism and hide in a bunker,” he said.
The BJP leader said that the people of the country and the media should ask the Congress about its 35-year-old promise of removing poverty from the country. Without naming AICC vice-president Rahul Gan­dhi, Modi spoke of how Congress leaders’ children were going to the huts of poor people and “showing off” their poverty as if it was their achievement. 
Cong slams Modi over veil remark
New Delhi, July 14: Congress on Sunday hit back at Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi for his remarks that the ruling party wears the “veil of secularism” each time it faces a crisis and said that this conduct is better than communalism.
“The veil of secularism is much better than their (BJP’s) communalism. Communalism divides the country,” Congress general secretary Shakeel Ahmad said on micro-blogging site Twitter.Earlier, speaking at a public meeting in Pune, Modi had charged that the Congress wears the veil of secularism and hides in a bunker each time it faces a crisis.
The BJP leader had alleged that the Congress uses this issue of secularism when asked about challenges like price rise, corruption and other issues. Calling Narendra Modi a “chest-thumping, self-proclaimed hero”, Union minister Sachin Pilot on Sunday said it is not possible for the Gujarat leader to be like former Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee.
The Congress leader also said that the life motto of Modi and many other BJP leaders is to “compromise and do whatever it takes to get to the position of prime minister”, but they must understand that “you cannot change colours overnight”.
“People who plan, conspire, desire and run after the post of prime minister, they will never make it. It comes to you with your work, honesty and acceptance,” Pilot said.
The 36-year-old Lok Sabha MP from Ajmer in Rajasthan, who holds the charge of the corporate affairs ministry, said that Modi is positioning himself as an “avatar” of the former prime minister, but “Modi is no Vajpayee”. The comments come amidst a political furore over Modi’s comments that he is a ‘Hindu nationalist’.