By Gopal B Kateshiya
New Delhi: On the day Prime Minister Narendra Modi addressed an election meeting in Morbi town, Patidar quota leader Hardik Patel launched a roadshow and said at multiple meetings in the district that the Patidar community will be defeated if the BJP manages to win the elections.
Targeting Modi to make the point that the people should open their eyes “after two decades” of BJP governance, Hardik said, “He has already started crying, but people now know they are crocodile tears. So he will do something new — he may do a huge roadshow in Ahmedabad, may collapse after becoming unconscious…. The BJP will pray…. You all will be swayed and elect them once more. But that victory will not be yours or mine.”
“If the BJP loses, it will be our grand victory, and if it wins, we all will lose. Only time will tell what the Congress does, or does not. But if we can fight such goons, we can certainly fight the Congress too.”
Starting the roadshow from Khakhrechi village of Maliya taluka, Hardik went to Bela village of Morbi taluka and Sajanpar village of Tankara taluka in the Patidar-dominated district.
As he criticized Modi and Kantilal Amrutiya, sitting BJP MLA and five-time legislator from Morbi, PAAS leader Manoj Panara introduced Amrutiya’s main challenger, Congress’s Brijesh Merja, at successive meetings and exhorted people to vote for him.
n an attempt to strike a cord with farmers, he said even a pair of bullocks need to be changed after five years: “If you sow the same crop repeatedly on a piece of land, the land loses its fertility.”
Taunting Modi over his remark that he had rushed to Morbi after the Machhu-II dam disaster in 1979, Hardik said, “Entire Gujarat was in Morbi at the time to help. I am happy he didn’t say there was a time he used to work in ceramic factory (here).”
Hardik also slammed the BJP for GST and demonetization, and alleged that BJP workers were responsible for violence when the Congress was in power.
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