Mukesh Ambani, chairman of Reliance Industries Ltd, looks on as Gujarat’s Chief Minister Narendra Modi presents a degree certificate to a student during a convocation ceremony at Pandit Deendayal Petroleum University (PDPU), a school of petroleum management, at Gandhinagar in Gujarat yesterday.

IANS/Kanpur

The Bharatiya Janata Party’s prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi yesterday launched a scathing attack on the ruling Congress and asked people to throw out the “corrupt, arrogant and inactive central government.”
Modi’s rally at Buddha Park here termed “Vijay Shankhnaad” - blowing of the conch shell to declare victory - was his first in a series of nine planned in Uttar Pradesh over the next two months ahead of the 2014 general elections.
Kanpur is 105km from the state capital Lucknow.
Referring to the 1857 First War of Independence when people from the region joined hands to overthrow the British rule, Modi said while Indians then fought for “swarajya” (independence), it is now time to fight for “surajya” (good governance).
The Gujarat chief minister not only attacked the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance central government but also slammed Uttar Pradesh’s ruling Samajwadi Party (SP) and the state’s opposition Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) for fooling people and “playing with their dreams.”
He said the parties which support the corrupt Congress federal government should also be voted out in the general elections.
“If you love your children and want them to lead a happy and prosperous life, take a vow here today that the people who have destroyed your happiness will soon be devoid of this power through your vote,” he said.
Modi said the Congress was fishing out new tricks in the form of new legislations and raking up issues like secularism and communalism, and alleged these were diversionary and divisive tactics to hide the party’s failures.
“They have nothing to show as their achievements, so every time someone asks them to comment, they say there has been no development in Gujarat,” he said.
“The people of Gujarat renewed their faith in me in December 2012,” Modi said and added it was the turn of the Congress to get people’s verdict.
The country’s citizens have a right to know what the government has done for them in the past five years, Modi said, referring to the price rise and the 2009 Congress manifesto promise of removing it in 100 days. “They have broken all promises and so send them packing,” Modi said.
Saying that neither Prime Minister Manmohan Singh nor Congress president Sonia Gandhi or vice president Rahul Gandhi was speaking on price rise and inflation, the BJP leader said the Congress was “power drunk, arrogant and lost no opportunity to hurt the poor even further.”
“The ‘shahzaada’ (prince) of Congress moves around in slums and a poor man’s home accompanied by camera crews and refers to poverty as a state of mind... one who has not seen poverty and was born with a golden spoon cannot understand what is the pain of being poor,” Modi said, referring to Rahul. He said he knows what poverty is as he grew up trying to make ends meet in his early life.
Meanwhile, the Samajwadi party said Modi will never become the prime minister.
Just like BJP patriarch L K Advani, Modi too would always remain the prime minister-in-waiting Samajwadi Party spokesman Rajendra Chowdhary said.
He alleged that the corporate world was “conspiring” with the Gujarat chief minister to take over the country.
“The people of the country will always prefer the development model of UP Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav to that of the Gujarat chief minister,” Chowdhary said.