The BJP, seeking to shield its likely prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi from increasing political attacks, on Tuesday accused the ruling Congress of deliberately creating an anti-Modi atmosphere and raising the communalism bogey to deflect the attention of the people and the Opposition from the UPA government’s failures.
“Just like encephalitis, which is a very dangerous disease to have, ‘secularitis’ is now spreading fast and affecting the Congress and some other parties as the general elections draw close. I appeal to all the Opposition parties in the country to combat ‘secularitis’,” BJP chief Rajnath Singh told to reporters, coining a term to describe a zealous, politically motivated championing of secularism around the time of polls.
“The Congress is bent on intensifying the debate between communalism and secularism, and Narendra Modi has become a tool in its hands so that the attention of the people and the Opposition parties are diverted from the UPA government’s utter failures,” said Mr Singh, who was in Patna on a two-day visit for the first time after the BJP was ousted by the JD(U) from Bihar’s coalition government.
In an overture to all the non-UPA parties, Mr Singh said: “I urge all the Opposition parties in the country to understand well in time the Congress conspiracy of deception through an intensified debate between communalism and secularism.” Pointing at the latest economic data and the NSSO survey reports, the BJP chief said India’s foremost crises currently were the jobless growth and the rapid decline in agriculture caused by the UPA government’s “wrong economic policies and shoddy implementation”.
“While the Congress always raises an anti-Modi fear among Muslims during the elections, the country has watched how the Muslims in Gujarat have wholeheartedly supported the BJP and Modi,” said Singh. In an obvious reference to the CBI probe into the Ishrat Jahan fake encounter case, he said: “A probe into some encounter in Gujarat is now on. But did encounters take place only in Gujarat? Were the reports of other probes into encounters elsewhere ever made public?”