Congress launches counter attack on Modi

While others wait in line,  a young voter shows her inked finger after casting her vote in Bhopal yesterday.

By Ashraf Padanna/ThiruvananthapuramThe Congress party has launched a counterattack on Narendra Modi and dismissed speculations about his chances of becoming the next premier. “Let’s not get carried away by opinion polls. There is a conscious undercounting of the Congress and overestimation of the BJP,” Congress spokesman Dr Shashi Tharoor said about the surveys that predict the Bharatiya Janata Party forming the next government.“They tend to miss out classical Congress voters like vegetable sellers”.Besides Tharoor, several Congress leaders hit back against Modi, the chief minister of Gujarat who has been mocking Congress leaders in his well-organised rallies across the country as the elections entered the crucial phase yesterday.“The Lok Sabha elections are not only about who should be in power but it’s a fundamental battle for the heart and the soul of India,” the junior minister who is seeking a re-election from Kerala said in Chennai.Meanwhile Finance Minister P Chidambaram  - whom Modi accused of manipulating elections and distributing watches carrying his pictures in his Sivaganga constituency where his son Karti Chidambaram is contesting this time - retorted the Gujarat chief minister was an “encounter chief minister.” Chidambaram was making a reference to fake encounter killings under the Modi government in Gujarat. Chidambaram also termed Modi a “compulsive liar”.Elsewhere, Home Minister Sushilkumar Shinde said “Modi calls himself a loyalist to his party, yet he refused to resign when Vajpayee (the then prime minister belonging to BJP) asked him to” after the 2002 pogrom and it “shows how undisciplined he is and his fascist way of life”.Raj Babbar, the Congress candidate in Ghaziabad, asked “if Modi couldn’t take care of his parents and wife, so how can he vouch to take care of the whole country?”Commenting on Modi’s refusal to accept a skullcap from Muslim clerics at a public meeting, Tharoor said the BJP leader had been seen wearing different kinds of headgear, some even “outlandish.” “But the skullcap is one headgear he rejects and it is to send a signal of bigotry and rejection of our Muslim brothers and sisters,” Tharoor said.Denying a Modi wave in southern parts of India, the former diplomat, said Modi only has divisive politics to offer and the BJP’s alliance in Tamil Nadu is cobbled together on a temporary basis. “There is not even a Modi ripple... If there is a Modi wave would you need all these people to surround himself? You don’t see Sonia Gandhi trying to stand next to Salman Khan...we know what we stand for,” Tharoor told reporters here referring to Modi’s meetings with Tamil superstar Rajinikanth and popular actor Vijay.